PAKISTAN doesn’t fare well on indices related to gender gap and women’s empowerment. The damning statistics include the number of girls who are out of school, the wide gender digital divide, high rates of violence against women, and women’s low representation in private and public leadership positions.
However, over time, there have been significant advances for Pakistani women leaders. Mohammad Ali Jinnah’s sister, Fatima Jinnah, was a key figure in Pakistan’s independence movement. She later became a presidential candidate, derided by the dictator Gen Ayub Khan. When Benazir Bhutto was elected prime minister in 1988, Pakistan became the first Muslim-majority country to be led by a woman. Pakistani women have led movements against dictators, including generals Ayub, Zia and Musharraf. Asma Jahangir was the first woman to be elected president of the Supreme Court Bar Association. Begum Naseem Wali Khan was the first woman to win a general election seat in the country. Justice Ayesha Malik is the first woman Supreme Court judge. Currently, Maryam Nawaz is the first woman chief minister in Pakistan.
Trans women have also made their mark, with Aisha Mughal being the first to represent a country at a UN session. Recently, Nayyab Ali was nominated for a civilian award by the government.
But despite these significant positives, the prosecution of political women in Pakistan is at an all-time high. Several women leaders of the PTI remain behind bars, including the ageing cancer survivor, Dr Yasmin Rashid, who has health issues. Since January, award-winning human rights lawyer Imaan Mazari Hazir has been in jail serving a 17-year sentence for mere tweets. Baloch women have now joined numerous men who have been forcibly disappeared; several remain in jail in politically motivated cases.
The prosecution of political women in the country is at an all-time high.
Do such incarcerations, cases and disappearances send an encouraging message to young girls across Pakistan? Does it motivate reluctant families to send girls to school so they can get an education and start careers? Does it motivate young lawyers to take up cases of the voiceless pro bono? Does it encourage young women to enter politics and do good for the people?
The incarcerations reflect a deep-rooted patriarchy that plagues the entire system. Take, for instance, gender-based attacks against women during election campaigns. The Digital Rights Foundation documented at least 163 social media posts in the run-up to the 2024 election that included gendered disinformation against women politicians, and at least 47 posts targeting “journalists covering the elections, subjecting them to gendered insults and online trolling campaigns that included online threats of physical assault”.
Deepfakes targeting women human rights defenders have become commonplace, with dehumanising content being disseminated online of women that are critical of state policies, with little to no consequences for such actions — despite Section 22 of the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act that makes edited and non-consensual imagery a crime. Since the 2025 amendment to Peca, the state is an eager complainant against journalists who are critical of it. Whereas the new ability of the state to file cybercrime cases against activists, journalists and politicians is to be condemned and should be reversed; it is worth noting that the state doesn’t take cognisance of instances of harassment and vitriol on social media that lead to crimes against women and children. This includes routine cases of men mercilessly killing women for rejecting their advances and proposals. The victims include women who are public figures on social media platforms as content creators.
On Aug 20, former professor and motivational speaker Faisal Asghar Imam was named in the murder case of his wife in their home, and social media was rife with testimonies of him making his students uncomfortable in class and online. The link between online misogyny and physical harm to life must not be taken lightly.
When Peca was being promulgated, those of us who opposed it were labelled anti-women for opposing the law. Today, we see how women are harassed, jailed, and punished including for naming their harassers by the same law meant to protect them.
The abuse of the law is not restricted to targeting women who dare to speak truth to power. Human rights lawyer Hadi Ali Chattha is currently serving a 17-year sentence for supporting his wife Imaan Mazari Hazir, with his punishment framed for the “crime” of reposting her tweets. Seemingly, men who support women related to them, they too will be punished.
In our geopolitical context, targeting women in the public sphere is particularly alarming. Girls in Afghanistan are not allowed to go to school after Class 6; women are not allowed to leave their house for employment, and they cannot even sing or be heard in public. In Iran, women have been killed for simply opposing the state’s enforcement of head covering rules.
In such an environment, it would be a powerful message to the neighbourhood if Pakistan has women in positions of power. Sadly, the current women’s leadership in Pakistan is hardly representative of half the population. There are no women federal ministers, and only one woman minister of state. In Sindh, the PPP that brought us a woman prime minister has only two women cabinet members; while the party’s cabinet in Balochistan has only one woman minister. In KP, the PTI has no women in the cabinet. A woman chief minister leads Punjab, but her cabinet has only two women ministers, with Marriyum Aurangzeb holding six portfolios.
As a pluralist federal democracy, at least on paper, Pakistan must move in line with Article 25 of the Constitution that empowers the government to make special provisions to protect women and children, apart from ensuring equal treatment for them. Women political prisoners, along with men, must be released; and women being half the population must be given half of the governing share. We owe this to every young girl in Pakistan.
The writer is director of Bolo Bhi, an advocacy forum for digital rights.
X: @UsamaKhilji
Published in Dawn, August 24th, 2026
