Tribal customs, meanwhile, still allow for girls to be traded like cattle to settle family feuds or to appease perceived slights of “honor.”

One day my family’s domestic helper, from the interior of Sindh Province, informed us that he was being pressured into giving his five-year-old daughter to a 25-year-old man from his village for marriage. The reasons for the pressure weren’t clear. These disturbing practices continue unabated, despite legislation outlawing them. Tribal influence in Pakistan’s villages, deserts and mountains is too strong to be stamped out by a piece of paper — and in Pakistan there is no comprehensive child protection act.

The biggest cultural factor that holds Pakistan’s girls back is psychological: fear. Parents love their daughters dearly, but they see the world as a dangerous place for girls, and Pakistan, with its harsh tribal customs, patchy security, and poor rule of law, confirms their worst fears. Parents feel they must protect girls from physical and emotional harm, and the only way they know how to do this is to clamp down on the freedom of girls.

Programs that put low-income girls in school from Swat to Sindh and all points in between, with economic incentives, are being enacted. In Swat, Malala Yousafzai’s home, the number of girls attending school has risen to 50 percent from 34 percent since 2011. Following worldwide trends, girls are outperforming boys in national examinations and outnumbering them on university campuses. The recent induction of a woman, Ayesha Farooq, into the Pakistani Air Force’s elite squad of fighter pilots, is symbolic of a change in how we see women.

But for Pakistan’s girls to thrive, the country needs to focus on their education. By making primary-school attendance compulsory — and following up the requirement with strict enforcement — girls can be given options beyond the traditional roles of servitude and submission now forced upon them. As Arshad Mahmood observed in the newspaper Dawn, Pakistan needs to enact a child-protection law that would recognize children’s rights under the Constitution and international conventions, enforce compulsory education, ban child labor and enact a national comprehensive child-protection policy with strict penalties for noncompliance.

Pakistan must have quality schools that are affordable, accessible and ensure the basic security of the girls who study and the women who teach there. Schools should be close to girls’ homes, especially in remote villages, and improvements as simple as working toilets for girls and women can be vital.

In the end, we dissuaded our domestic helper from giving his daughter away. He listened, and his daughter was saved from that fate. But the little girl outside the mall, in her boy’s disguise, continues to sell her wares today. Pakistan owes her much more, but can it deliver? Millions of girls across the country are waiting desperately for the answer.