Daily Times

It is difficult to imagine life for Pakistani women as anything other than a cesspool of unfulfilled dreams-countless capable women have been confined to their homes and systematically kept from achieving what could have been possible under different circumstances. So we’re allowed to be surprised when we hear news of the Peshawar High Court appointing its first female Chief Justice, a long overdue move for a country that still doesn’t have enough women in the upper echelons of its judicial system. Today is a good day for both Mussarat Hilali and thousands of women who look towards her as evidence that there is still hope for women in this country.

Just last year, Pakistan appointed its first woman Supreme Court judge, Ayesha Malik, a landmark decision for a country where the law is often wielded against women. A glass ceiling was broken that day, shifting the discourse to much-needed conversations about greater inclusivity. Pakistan desperately needs both lawyers and judges who understand the hostile environment many women face both at home and in everyday life-a judiciary that is dominated by men also inevitably reflects their biases and inherent inability to understand what life for women is really like in this country.

It is not lost to us that it was under Malik’s leadership that Pakistan abolished its two-finger test for rape survivors, an archaic metric for determining a victim’s sexual past. Ultimately, the two-finger test is an unscientific practice that was rooted in a patriarchal obsession with the purity of women and has been leveraged unfairly against women to undermine the credibility of their testimony. Earlier this year, a female judge presiding over a sessions court ruled that out-of-court settlements in rape cases have no legal value, another historic moment for a country where perpetrators often coerce women into withdrawing their complaints in the rare instance that they choose to seek legal recourse for sexual violence.

Appointing women to positions of power is more than just a symbolic gesture-it is an admission that the fight against gender inequality cannot be won without more and more women taking up space in spaces that they were previously deemed unfit for. *