On November 9 2023, a new study focusing on the socio-legal gap analysis of recruitments, retention and promotion of Women in Lahore Police was released. This is the second study in the series titled, ‘Fair Representation in the Justice Sector’ by researchers Nida Usman Chaudhary and Anoshay Fazal.
“The first part of this series was released in June 2022 which focused on gaps in the recruitment and appointments in the legal and judicial sector while this study is centered around the barriers and challenges faced by women in police,” explained Nida Usman Chaudhary.
“The purpose essentially of this series was to understand the structural, hidden and other barriers that hold women back from their fair representation in the justice sector and to provide recommendations that can help address those barriers at institutional, administrative, policy or legislative levels to improve the representation of women in judiciary, bar councils and in police amongst others to improve access to justice and ensure that women’s voices are included in the forums that dispense justice,” she added.
Anoshay Fazal, who co-authored these studies with Nida, reflected on her experience of working on this latest study . "Undertaking this research has been a very insightful experience. The exercise not only shed light on the various types of challenges that women face within police (in Lahore) such as lack of daycare facility or allowances, unequal allocation of work and transportation issues, but also brought to fore the wider challenges around how the police service is structured and how it operates within the political context that may become a challenge in ensuring the continuity of policies that may be adopted for gender mainstreaming,” said Fazal.
“The insecurity and volatility of tenure of IG is a major issue. The study revealed that in the past five years, Punjab had seen the change of 12 IGs and none of them was able to complete their stated tenure of three years. This causes disruption in the continuation of policies, if any, as the change of IG can indicate change of will and policy at the top because of lack of institutionalization of such endeavours,” explained Chaudhary.
The study is also available online and can be accessed here.