- The increasing number of women lawyers makes old attitudes outdated
By: Zainab Zafar
After attending a seminar on Women in Law in Pakistan and listening to the stories of many brave women lawyers I became a bit sad. I had to think a lot whether it was about the nature of the profession to plead for justice on someone’s behalf who have been wronged or it was about the overall work environment available to budding women lawyers in the overwhelmingly male-dominated courts and katcheries culture.
If one visits any district courts complex in the country, one will find many makeshift lawyers’ chambers. Some lawyers are also seen working under the open sky with a table, a chair and a couple of wooden benches. In the Islamabad District Courts one finds some law chambers even encroaching the footpaths and the nearby football ground. This work environment is neither aesthetically inspiring nor gives any good impression about the notion of rule of law. Similarly in the organizational structure of Barrooms and Bar Associations, women’s increasing participation and presence is missing. Then there are crowded courtrooms mostly populated by men. The law chambers, barrooms and the courts appear to be non-friendly places for women judges, women lawyers and female litigants. The time has arrived to rethink and redesign the entire system, the courts’ architecture and related structures through the lens of gender.
The profession of law itself is also divided into its own inequalities. We see a huge gender imbalance when it comes to women in law generally but the gender ratio really goes down for women as compared to men in regards to cases related to Criminal Law. Many litigants, most of the time men, prefer to be represented by someone of the same gender. Women are often not seen as capable enough of handling work related to the courts publicly. This thinking has to change and good omen is that it is slowly but surely changing.
Perhaps this is the reason that many young women lawyers are confined to do case-related research, legal papers preparation and other secretarial work in big law firms, resulting in least acknowledged contributions in cases which are often much below the actual potential of women lawyers. According to the Annual Report (2017-18) there are 147 Law colleges in the country imparting legal education. This means every year many fresh law graduates, including a sizable number of females, will be joining the profession. This calls for an expansion of safe and organized work space.
Every profession has its own pluses and minuses, but in the legal profession one has to seek remedies for clients, and every case has a story –most of the time disturbing. Within the professional spaces, the experiences and emotions of men and women are different. The men lawyers have access to many more spaces of interaction and conversations with colleagues to share their experiences in the barrooms, whereas such spaces are either non-existent or limited for women lawyers. For a woman to carry herself alongside the burden society puts on her such as concepts like modesty or family responsibility, carrying the role of being the ‘emotional’ one or even facing more tangible issues such as lack of separate bathroom facilities in these courts and firms. If not bathroom facilities, then lack of day cares or even changing areas for their children. One can easily reduce the physical discomforts some women experience in their daily struggles.
These issues have been there in plain sight for long. If men have access to proper and appropriate bathroom facilities it should not be that problematic for a woman to get the same. The concept of applying the same standard of quality and access to facilities to both genders in accordance to what their sex requires is a basic human right, yet has become a barrier to women in law in Pakistan. To bring these small but important things into the notice of those who make decisions, the Bar associations must encourage women lawyers to be more active in their activities. They can reserve some posts during their annual election for women. For example, in District Bar Jhang, out of its total membership of approximately 1,000 lawyers, only 26 are women lawyers. They have a small separate barroom and a library but they can also use the big common facilities as well. Interestingly there are three women civil judges and one woman additional session judge in Jhang. This trend is encouraging and calls for making their workspaces more gender-friendly. The increased presence of women judges in the lower judiciary and rising number of women lawyers can also help develop a culture of mutual learning and support.
On a larger scale the statistics of Sindh Bar Council by the end of 2017 there were only 2,446 women lawyers enlisted with the Bar as compared to a much higher number of 15,752 men. Not only are fewer women going into the profession, rather they are not given the opportunity or are not encouraged to do so. The issues women face within this field vary from factors such as wage inequality to being seen as too emotional to take on the job making it harder for them to have cases, as well as the idea that after having children women will not be able to work well in this field.
The profession of law itself is also divided into its own inequalities. We see a huge gender imbalance when it comes to women in law generally but the gender ratio really goes down for women as compared to men in regards to cases related to Criminal Law. Many litigants, most of the time men, prefer to be represented by someone of the same gender. Women are often not seen as capable enough of handling work related to the courts publicly. This thinking has to change and good omen is that it is slowly but surely changing.
Women throughout numerous professions in Pakistan face different and difficult experiences from that of men. This extends to the experiences women face in their daily lives which differ from that of men, making it all the more important for us to not only highlight them but to ensure that we have more women in various professions to change stereotypical attitudes, mindsets and only male-focused workplace imagination. Otherwise we will continue to associate women with certain roles within limited professional fields.
