7 women out of 126 judges in superior judiciary
ISLAMABAD: A recent report compiled by the Law and Justice Commission of Pakistan (LJCP) says of the 126 judges in Pakistan’s superior judiciary, only seven are female.
The upper tier of judiciary includes the Supreme Court of Pakistan, the Federal Shariat Court, and the five high courts.
The report, titled Women in Justice Sector, aims to report the statistics of women working in Pakistan’s judicial sector, highlighting judges, lawyers, prosecutors and other personnel, read an LJCP press release.
As per the report, currently there are 3,142 judges and judicial officers working across the country. Out of these, 2,570 are male and 572 are female, 18 per cent of the total working judges.
The report revealed that there are currently 126 judges working at the upper tier of the judiciary. Out of them, 119 are male judges, while only seven are female judges. Therefore, female judges make up only 5.5 per cent of the total working strength of judges at the upper tier.
According to the report, the Supreme Court boasts only two female judges compared to the other 12 male judges.
The most female judges — three — are active in the Sindh High Court. Meanwhile, there are no female judges in the Federal Shariat Court, Peshawar High Court or the High Court of Balochistan.
At the district judiciary level, a similar trend is observed in the report, with only 565 female lawyers out of a total 3,016 active staff — less than a fith of the total figure.
The report said that a total of 230,879 lawyers were enrolled with different provincial bar associations across the country. Of them, 198,100 lawyers are men while 40,000 are female.
The report highlighted the significant contributions of women in the justice sector of the country but also pointed out that their representation is not proportional to their share of the overall population.
It recommended that the government and other relevant stakeholders should take steps to encourage the inclusion of more females in the justice sector.