Women Lawyers in Pakistan: Navigating in a Male-Dominated Field

Abstract: As a patriarchal society, Pakistan's legal profession is a male-dominated profession. In recent years, however, we have noticed that women are joining this profession in great numbers. The overall situation of employment in general is not very good for women and the legal profession is no exception. from lack of opportunity to experiencing discrimination, women face these terrible issues in all professions in Pakistan. This study investigated the experiences of female lawyers regarding discrimination and examine the power relations in the legal profession. It examines the difficulties and challenges of female lawyers in their daily professional life and adopts Bourdieu's theoretical framework of habitus, capital and field to analyze the same. The project uses qualitative method to investigate the above mentioned issues related to gender discrimination in the legal profession. The project uses primary data collected via semi-structured interviews with open ended questions conducted with female lawyers from three different cities of Pakistan. The main results of this thesis found that female lawyers in Pakistan, are facing discrimination in terms of resistance from society and colleagues in the legal profession. The substantial challenges they face in daily professional life are gender bias behavior from their male colleagues, judges and clients, low income and implicit harassment. Based on the found results this can be concluded that the stereotype of women in the society makes it difficult for women to acquire the higher status in the legal profession. The power structure in the legal profession is male driven and they have set the hierarchies according to them. The difficulties and challenges of female lawyers are overlooked easily but they are trying to overcome and struggling to establish their identity in the legal profession.