Name: Naveera Taj

Id :593880
Subject: Pakistan Studies (Bonus point assignment; a summary of talk arranged by
university.)
Professor: Saeed Hussain
TALK ARRANGED BY THE UNIVERSITY ON THE TOPIC OF WOMEN IN LAW

On 20th December 2023, I had the opportunity to join a talk arranged by FAS faculty on

the topic of Women in Law. The host was Ms. Ujala Hussain and the guest speakers were Ms.

Sara Malkani who is a lawyer, Ms. Muniza Kakar who works for Refugee Advocacy and Ms.

Tahira Hassan who works as a Family Lawyer. This talk was very significant for me as

personally I am interested in women’s empowerment advocacy, and I learned many things that I

will discuss in the upcoming paragraphs.

The talk formally began with Ujala’s brief introduction to our guest and by posing the

question to Ms. Sara Malkani why is it important to discuss women’s Lawyer empowerment?

The answer to this question was quite interesting as Ms. Sara dwelled on the patriarchal approach

of the state, institutions, and the rules that are being followed by courts and police. She shared

her own experience of being at risk while fighting a case where the opponents were male. She

also emphasized how there should be a balance of power and authority for women and

transgender in institutions. The thing that still echoed in my ears is her remark on the topic of

talk show to be “Women and Law” instead of “Women in Law”. Her this remarked made me

contemplate on how the state and institutions are dealing with women is a true reflection of

masculine supremacy. Lastly, she proposed a solution to the prevailing problem as “the way

forward is, Females should come forward.

Next to her was Ms. Tahira, who had been working for stateless people who had join

Pakistan after the separation of Bangladesh i.e., the population for which she was working was

mostly from Bihar and Bengal. Ujala asked her about the challenges that she faced during her

work and her optimistic way of answering was amazing. She said: it wasn’t a challenge at all

because she, being a woman, was always respected and given priority in all matters.” However,
she also mentioned her struggle with adaptation to the workload and pressure as she was very

new to the field. She then talked about how the problem of stateless people is being treated and

they are given partial or incomplete identity. This portrays the state’s image as an ostrich that

fears a situation and hides its head in the sand, thinking of the condition to be well in its absence.

As a state-owned land for the area where these partial identity holders live, the state must be

responsible to facilitate them, but the Pakistani government is lagging in this regard and is doing

nothing to help them gain identity.

The third speaker was Ms. Muniza Kakar who gave insight into how all the problems

faced by the common man are results of the state’s unequal way of dealing with the common

man and men with higher status. She clearly stated how the state shows aggression and violence

when a common man tries to talk about his rights. Then she also narrated her journey of

advocating for the refugees, which dated back to July 2022 when she was the only one to stand

up for their rights and the kind of problems she faced like titles associated with her name and

especially the restrictions from her family side that had started when she expressed her will in

pursuing in Law, but her concluding sentence was so strong that I wished to have such

confidence: challenges are there, always at every step that you take to move forward but you

need to be prepared for them.

At last, Ujala concluded her part by asking all three ladies to suggest solutions for the

problems faced by females and the answers given were as follows:

Ms. Sara: awareness of reproductive rights, basic health services, contraception, abortion,

counseling, and awareness about reproductive health.

Ms. Tahira: the mindset of portraying females as inferior and weak needs to be changed by

showing more processes in all fields of life that are available to females.

Ms. Muniza: The inferiority complex associated with females needs to be changed, the

accountability mechanism needs to be modified and systems need to be constantly examined for

its capacity of giving females their rights.

With this, the talk came to an end and the guest speakers were presented with gifts.