THE Law and Justice Commission of Pakistan has published, in collaboration with UN Women, a Gender Fair Language Framework for the judiciary. It is a 20-page document containing vocabulary premised on promoting equality in law. ‘Chairman’ is replaced with ‘chairperson’. The ‘reasonable man’ of tort becomes the ‘reasonable person’. Passages quoted from older judgements are even permitted to be marked with a [sic] to disown the original phrasing.
This is thoughtful and commendable work. Courts are, at last, being taught how to speak about women. It is unfortunate then that they still aren’t allowed to fully listen to them.
The Law and Justice Commission is asking the judiciary not to refer to women as the ‘weaker sex’. However, Pakistan’s law of evidence (Qanun-i-Shahadat Order, 1984) still says, in Article 17(2)(a), that any matter relating to financial or future obligations that is reduced to writing must be witnessed by “two men, or one man and two women, so that one may remind the other, if necessary”.
In practice, this means a woman in Pakistan cannot get a loan for business, rent a house, settle a debt, or give a guarantee without at least one man to witness her signature. It makes no difference that she has four women standing by to attest for her. The contract might even refer to her properly as ‘she’ instead of ‘he’. None of that survives the signing page: where every national and international commitment made for women’s equality is discarded. Embarrassingly, it is also where foreign counterparties discover the Pakistani state’s arithmetic and go looking for witnesses to match: two women to one man.
Courts may use more equal language, but laws haven’t changed.
The State Bank should be troubled by this the most. Millions are spent on financial inclusion — targets for women’s accounts, women’s credit, support desks. All to bring women to the table and then hand them a contract with signature blocks for two witnesses only. Two, because it is easier to opt for two men than one man and two women. Not just banks, but companies, law firms, real estate agents, anybody who needs a contract witnessed takes the shortcut and pulls two men from the next desk. By default then, contracts and templates carry two witness spaces, never three. This isn’t prejudice, which requires actual thought and action. It is something far duller. It’s saving lines on a page, avoiding all mental effort. You would be forgiven for thinking this is, perhaps, one of Pakistan’s most efficient ways of making women disappear: not by deliberation, but disuse.
The defence of Article 17(2)(a) has always been theological. That is not a debate I would delve into here. But notice how the Federal Shariat Court argued to keep Article 17(2)(a) on the books. In 2012, three male judges analysed its religious basis, with no advocate, state counsel or amicus curiae to assist. Litigation is a hardship, they decided, from which women have been spared. In no period of history or any society should a woman have to face the “irritating and imposing male-majority environs” of a court alone, that too with thirst, hunger and unanswered “biological and natural calls”. It is equally unfair to ask a pregnant or nursing mother to give evidence. And then the court’s other problem: women find it much harder than men to recall “unpalatable and objectionable descriptions” repeatedly.
Financial matters, it seems, are where the real unpleasantness lies. The same Article 17(2)(a) shows no concern for fraught nerves while accepting one woman’s word in a murder trial.
The courtroom part, at least, holds true. But it would be foolish to see that as anything other than a scathing indictment of the state. No person of any sex should have to suffer in court without water or a bathroom, but no one’s ever asked a man to bring a friend along to testify. If a second woman is required because Pakistan has not, in 79 years, made its courts fit for half its population, that is not theology. It’s plain neglect.
Worse still is how out of tune Article 17(2)(a) is from everything else the law says about women and money. Just this year, the Supreme Court ruled at length to uphold women’s right to inheritance. It is unlawful for a woman’s husband or in-laws to lay claim to her gold. For the first time in Pakistan’s history, a woman’s right to a share in matrimonial property was recognised. Yet, the same legal system that is fighting for her right to be financially independent does not trust her to witness a signature without a chaperone. There’s also the judge who can decide a million-dollar lawsuit but can’t attest a lease alone.
Irony and humiliation, another one of the state’s compulsory pairings for women.
The writer is a lawyer.
Published in Dawn, September 12th, 2026
