Gender, justice, and Pakistan: Part 1

Pakistan is a country known for many virtues and far more than many vices. Our rankings in global indices remarking on the state of our human rights read as a consistently downwards sloping graph over the years, ranging from terrible to truly inexcusable.

To boot, we stand loud and proud at number 145 out of a grand total of 146 countries that were reviewed in terms of gender parity, as per the World Economic Forum’s recent report. Even as per the government’s own admission, SDG 5 which relates to gender equality has remained stagnant in terms of progress since 2017.

This spiraling trend is keeping in line with the average daily headlines we read as a nation, coupled with the Pakistan Health and Demographic Survey 2017-18 finding that states that a staggering 28 per cent of Pakistani women aged 15-49 have faced some form of gender-based violence in their lives.

This in itself should be eye-opening, given that underreporting is a key concern in this demographic, as the act of speaking up on its own is laced with shame, to say nothing of what follows the minute a GBV (gender-based violence) survivor chooses to voice their pain.

Factors such as this imposition of societal stigma, internal psychological barriers, fear of retaliation, and a dearth of faith in the judicial system widen the gap between harm and justice. Given this, the actual numbers, even at a modest estimate, are scary to just ponder over.

By and large, the conditioning around gender roles seeps in from an early age and serves to keep existing power structures in place by assigning biases and hierarchies. This flows seamlessly into career choices, workplaces and limited growth opportunities where women are concerned. This is evident from the low percentage of women in the Pakistani workforce, which as of 2021 stands at 20 per cent whilst the population’s gender distribution stands at 49 per cent.

In a country where interaction with the police bears greater resemblance to a threat rather than providing any semblance of safety, it is more than understandable why we see the low numbers that are reported when just anecdotal evidence would suggest we have a GBV epidemic on our hands.

These elements, coupled with the dismal rates of women’s representation in the law and order sector of the country act as a compounded cause for our regression as a society. It is not a mere coincidence that our women are largely absent from both ends of the spectrum, as those approaching the justice system and those responsible for upholding it.

One of the key and obvious ways to combat this, and promote public confidence in the system, is the inclusion of women in these spaces that have been created to dispense justice.

Just as with any public policymaking endeavour, if those who are affected by the policy in question are not consulted or involved in its making and shaping, it will all but certainly make for an impotent strategy, at best.

A participatory approach is key to providing impactful remedies and if women are not a significant part of the workforce involved in dispensing order and justice, we will continue to repeat mistakes that have brought us to the penultimate ranking status we currently enjoy. Not only that, the avenues of access to justice can repeatedly be remade and tweaked, widened and highlighted but till we can assure our girls and women of a genuine shift in prevailing attitudes that we all have grown up witnessing, no actual change can be expected to come of it.

For us to move forward hand-in-hand with all of our people on equal footing, and for us to progress past antiquated gender roles, we need a multilateral approach to fill in the lacunae glaring at us. One that targets the core issue from all angles. Not only do we need laws implemented equitably but for those implementing them to be representative of and sympathetic to our population’s reality.

This, in practical terms, could look like progressive recruitment drives in key sectors to offset real-time barriers to entry. Gender sensitivity programmes inspire empathy and neutralise the knee-jerk reaction of victim shaming. We need to actively commit to wanting better for our women, as well as for society at large.

To be continued...

The writer is a lawyer by education and a digital rights activist by profession.