Despite comprising nearly half of Pakistan’s population and an increasing share of law graduates, women remain strikingly underrepresented in the leadership of the legal profession. The newly released Bar Elections Candidacy Gender Report 2025–2030 by the Women in Law Initiative Pakistan offers an unflinching look at this disparity: out of 638 candidates contesting bar council elections across the country, only 24 are women. That is a mere 4 per cent. These numbers are not just disappointing; they are damning. They lay bare a systemic failure decades in the making, one that continues to keep women on the fringes of professional power in law.
Bar Councils are not symbolic institutions. They shape the professional norms, licensing mechanisms, and regulatory policies of the legal system. That women are nearly absent from these powerful forums is not an oversight; it is the result of deliberate structural design, reinforced by inertia and exclusion. The Women in Law report does not mince words: this is not a pipeline issue; it is a wall, and it was built brick by brick, policy by policy.
The history of women in Pakistan’s legal profession is a story of quiet endurance, not triumphant inclusion. From Asma Jahangir to Justice Majida Rizvi, the few women who rose to prominence did so not because the system enabled them, but in spite of it.
Structural exclusion begins early and runs deep. Women in law firms are often denied mentorship, challenging assignments, and advancement opportunities. In courtrooms, they struggle to be seen as equals, let alone contenders. By the time a woman has the seniority required to contest bar council elections, many of her peers have already been edged out, disillusioned, or silenced. What we are witnessing is not the natural outcome of low interest or lack of qualification. It is professional attrition by design.
The legal framework itself is complicit. Eligibility criteria for bar council candidacy, as shaped by the Legal Practitioners and Bar Councils Act, 1973, stand as one of the most effective tools of exclusion. Amended repeatedly over the years, the rules now demand a minimum number of independently argued and reported cases in higher courts — a standard that, while masquerading as merit, functions as a gatekeeping mechanism. The Women in Law report lays bare how these requirements disproportionately disqualify women. Why? The pathways to courtroom litigation remain obstructed by structural discrimination in law firms, familial burdens, and the near-total absence of institutional support. The profession punishes women not for a lack of talent, but for the social conditions it has done nothing to change.
Women described being shoved, groped, and harassed. There were no separate entrances or voting queues. Campaigning was aggressive and invasive, with supporters pressing cards and badges into faces
Worse still, unlike Pakistan’s legislatures, bar councils operate with no affirmative action mandates. No reserved seats. No minimum representation thresholds. No institutional safeguards to support women’s entry into leadership. This legal vacuum persists in direct violation of Pakistan’s Constitution: Article 25, which guarantees equality before the law, and Article 34, which obligates the state to ensure full participation of women in every sphere of national life. That the legal profession, whose very purpose is to uphold these values, continues to ignore them, reveals a resistance to reform that runs to its core.
And while Pakistan hesitates, other Muslim-majority countries have moved forward. Tunisia has sustained over 40 per cent female representation in legal associations and courts. Indonesia appoints women to senior regulatory roles, including its constitutional court. Turkey’s bar association boasts a female vice president and gender-inclusive election structures.
These examples dismantle the convenient myth that Islamic or cultural contexts inherently obstruct gender parity in law. What Pakistan lacks is not cultural permission; it lacks political will. In Pakistan, we continue to debate whether representation even matters. The result? A profession that claims to protect justice but is built on exclusion. A regulatory structure that presumes neutrality but is blind to half the population. As the Women in Law report argues, this is not just a matter of gender; it is a matter of legitimacy.
But the problem does not end with candidacy numbers. A second report by the Women in Law Initiative, the Voter Experiences Report, reveals just how hostile the electoral environment itself is for women. Drawing from testimonies of 52 voters (69 per cent of them women), it exposes a voting process that was not only chaotic and poorly managed, but also physically unsafe. Women described being shoved, groped, and harassed. There were no separate entrances or voting queues. Campaigning was aggressive and invasive, with supporters pressing cards and badges into faces. The atmosphere, as one lawyer described it, was “worse than a fish market.”
Women in law are not waiting for permission. They are demanding accountability
For many, the simple act of voting, a basic democratic right, became an ordeal. Some women said they needed male colleagues to escort them through the crowd. Others left without casting their vote, driven away by confusion, fear, or the total absence of order. This is not just electoral mismanagement. It is institutional negligence. It sends a loud and clear message: you do not belong here.
Even more alarming are the revelations of data privacy violations. Lawyers received dozens of unsolicited calls and messages. Campaign materials were sent to their homes. Their CNIC numbers and bar licence information, data that should have been protected, were being used without consent. The source? The very institutions meant to safeguard their professional records. As the Women in Law report makes clear, this is not just unethical; it is illegal.
What emerges from these reports is a profession that is not just failing women, it is actively deterring them. It demands from women not only excellence and seniority, but resilience in the face of harassment, erasure, and indignity. It is not that women are not qualified to lead; it is that the cost of leadership has been made intolerably high.
And this poses a deeper crisis. The legal profession holds itself up as the guardian of justice, rights, and equality. But a system that fails to uphold these values within its own ranks cannot be trusted to defend them in society. An election where women are pushed aside physically and institutionally is not democratic; it is discriminatory. A profession that tolerates harassment, data breaches, and procedural bias does not represent the rule of law; it erodes it.
Change is not optional. It is overdue.
The bar councils must introduce reserved seats or minimum representation thresholds for women. Eligibility requirements must be broadened to include the full scope of legal practice, from litigation to academia, research, policy, and mediation. Election procedures must be restructured with safety, dignity, and accessibility in mind: separate voting queues, no-campaign zones, multilingual instructions, and real enforcement of a professional code of conduct. Campaigning must be regulated, and the use of personal data must be protected under strict legal guidelines. Biometric systems, digital ballots, voter privacy protections- these are not luxuries. They are the bare minimum.
The Women in Law Initiative Pakistan has offered not only the evidence but the solutions. The question now is whether the legal profession is prepared to act, or if it will once again turn its face away from the truth.
Pakistan’s legal community stands at a crossroads. If it continues to exclude, it will not only lose women, but it will also lose credibility. A profession that does not represent or protect its own cannot claim to serve the nation. The time for symbolic statements is over. This moment demands structural reform.
Women in law are not waiting for permission. They are demanding accountability.
The legal profession must now decide: will it reform itself, or remain complicit in its own irrelevance?