A decrepit, red-bricked shelter with clotheslines outside and children’s sharp  surround the  solemn premises of the Punjab Women’s Protection Authority office in Wahdat Colony, Lahore. The seating area for men - not allowed inside the premises - is on benches in the compound. Inside there is a waiting area in front of two desks - one, were a policewoman sits, the reception desk; a separate room with cubicles for lawyer meetings, the office of the two District Protection Officers, and across the waiting area, the office of the Regional Protection Officer. Without explicit PML-N insignia, but with very evident PML-N messaging, it is a promise by CM Punjab Maryam Nawaz.

The PWPA as a Site

In undertaking my research on women’s relationships with the law (both formal and informal) the PWPA as a site is as rich and multitudinous as I could have hoped - the multiplicity of stakeholders allows for a deeper analysis - both on an ideological and social front, and on a class-based front in the choices and motivations of these women and girls. The site is particularly interesting in its exclusion of men - even when required to sign witness documents or CNICs for formal proceedings to lawyers, men will remain outside the premises. Many a time they look extremely uncomfortable to be there - sitting on the cement benches of the compound as “aurton ka kaam” is happening inside. This physical exclusion of men also means their legal and social exclusion from the proceedings being undertaken inside - which is very subversive to gender-based exclusions^{1 2}. 

One of my interviewees told me that this was the first time her opinion on how she should proceed with her khula was listened to, “Isse pehle mere bhai aur abbu hi sab kuch handle kar rahay thay. Mujhe pata hai woh mera faida chahtay hein lekin yahan unhein bahir bitha kar sirf meri hi baat suni gayee. Mujhe yeh bohat acha laga. Iss se mujh mein confidence aya hai ke mein theek kar rahi hun.” (Before I came here, my father and brother were handling everything. I know they mean well, but I appreciate that only my perspective was listened to here. I feel more confident in what I am about to do now). 

Feminist scholars have long argued on the creation of spaces - including offices of law enforcement and the courts - as entirely exclusionary to women. “Mujhe thana katchery nahin jana”- (I do not want to go to the station and the courts), retorted one woman I interviewed who was seeking a protective order against her ex-boyfriend for cyber-harassment. What the intentions behind the SOPs for the site are to construe a space for women’s safety and upliftment - in understanding that “space is socially produced and relational rather than neutral”³. The PWPA despite its many operation flaws and limitations as a site, at least creates some modicum of subversion of the spatial logic of the patriarchy found breathing down the necks of female legal subjects, especially those subjected to gender-based violence, in the courts and the police station.
 

Agencies, Authorities and Reconciliations - Participant Interviews

“Ham nay yeh dekha hai ke yeh pehla qadam utha ke hamaray paas ana bari himmat ka kaam hai” (We acknowledge and appreciate that taking the first step to come to us is a courageous one). 

“Ziada tar cases mein khawateen sulah chahti hein” (In most of the cases, women are seeking reconciliation)

Onto the mettle of what this study is about while the posturing by the government does concede that there is a serious GBV problem in the country, the knee-jerk reaction by the state is to throw money to establish more courts, protection agencies and shelters rather than looking at the particularities of sociological dynamics that underpin the lives of the women seeking recourse at the PWPA. My fieldwork, which has spanned several months, largely negates this unilateral perspective of women as passive victims- hence the proposition that a non-typical study which takes into account the primary dimension of class. What I have concluded through my research is that the overwhelming number of cases undertaken by the PWPA do not see esoteric legal solutions such as court cases and convictions (95% are resolved through conciliation, in the words of the District Protection Officer I interviewed) and there are very specific class and social differences which underpin this. For example, middle class women resort to a face-saving exercise more often, likely because of their particular respectability politics- my observations have concluded that working class and upper class women are more likely to pursue legal remedies including protection orders, FIRs and divorces. The point of this study is to make the case that the government can greatly benefit from taking into account these class-based pursuit of remedies. What the government is doing right now is perpetuating through its ideologies in the PWPA women in general, specially those seeking recourse from GBV re "a cross-culturally singular, homogeneous group with the same interests, perspectives, goals and similar experiences"⁴. Perhaps the most significant realisation to be had in adopting the calculus that I am proposing is that these class-based decisions of social and legal agency are methods of actively resisting oppression in various local contexts"⁵. If we are to place these undertakings in the larger work on women’s empowerment and feminist praxis, if it can be called that, in Pakistan, the banal ignoring of complicated and nuanced contexts at the hands of government institutions working for women’s justice cannot be continued as a systemised operation because it does not fix anything. 

The unfortunate conclusion I have reached of the PWPA’s operations is that it is a barely-feminist "methodological co-optation” of the operations of NGOs which per Saigol “transformed feminist resistance into “manageable” development discourse, limiting its radical political potential"⁶.  Such an approach works through the adaptation of the language of global governance methods on gender issues, which is entirely disembodied and decontextualised in its transplantation into the PWPA, women become the esoteric disempowered, reduced “clients” or even “beneficiary”. My study illustrates across three different stakeholder relationships – the ‘clients’ of the PWPA, the employees and facilitators of the PWPA and myself and other legal professionals that- the strategic and symbolic utilisation of this site by women is not only a clever undertaking, it is an instrumentality that must be thoroughly analysed in any assessment of the workings of this institution- it lays bare a very clear policy imperative- formal adjudication is not working. Following this assessment, the Punjab Government could stop forking over the pretty penny it does in concluding that the few legally intelligible cases means there is an access to justice problem and creates more courts and more shelters. The liberal legalist structure of the PWPA which ignores these tactical operations does not materially transform either the institution- and closes its eyes to non-traditional methods women employ to obtain power. These non-traditional methods are essential to study if the goal is to end endemic violence against women.  

Fatima Sarfaraz is a final year student at SAHSOL- she is interested in all things class politics, labour law, women’s movements for justice and South Asian history. Powered (re: controlled) by an incurable caffeine addiction, she is also obsessed with cats and is learning (quite unsuccessfully) to play the sitar.

1.  Junaid, Fatima, Mian S. Ahmad, and Sunbal Taj. 2026. “Respectfully Excluded: Symbolic Violence, Space and Benevolent Sexism in Academia in Pakistan,” Gender, Work & Organization: 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1111/gwao.70172.
2. Arezoo Ziaee, ‘Spaces of Radical Possibility: Designing for and from Intersectionality’ (2024) 3 Trends in Higher Education 1118.
3. Doreen Massey, Space, Place and Gender (Polity Press 1994) 3–5, 154–162.
4. Ibid page 3.
5. Ranjoo Seodu Herr, ‘Reclaiming Third World Feminism: Or Why Transnational Feminism Needs Third World Feminism’ (2014) 12(1) Meridians 1, 6–9.
6. Rubina Saigol, Feminism and the Women’s Movement in Pakistan: Actors, Debates and Strategies (Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung 2016) 40–42.