I came to the legal profession carrying a certain kind of innocence. I was trained at elite law schools, shaped by ideas of constitutionalism, dignity, and professional ethics. The law, as it was taught to me, was a tool for justice, a discipline grounded in reason, restraint, and moral responsibility. My friends who joined law firms in Karachi, Lahore, and Islamabad spoke of long hours, demanding seniors, and ruthless competition, but never of waiting rooms. Never of bar rooms. Never of sitting for hours in a shared space simply because there was nowhere else to go.
So when my senior lawyer, during my first week at the Multan High Court, told me to “sit in the ladies’ bar room,” I was taken aback. It was not a suggestion. It was a fact of practice. That room, crowded, watchful, and heavy with unspoken hierarchies, became my introduction to a legal culture I had not been prepared for. It was here, not in courtrooms or textbooks, that I began to learn how power actually operates.
The ladies’ bar room frightened me from the beginning. Not because of anything overt, but because of the constant sense of being evaluated. For weeks, no one spoke to me. Eyes followed my movements. Conversations stopped when I entered. People seemed to be assessing who I was, where I came from, and perhaps most importantly, what “kind” of woman lawyer I would turn out to be. In a profession that prides itself on objectivity, judgment arrived swiftly and silently.
Over time, patterns emerged. Some women came to the bar room only during election season, seeking votes and allegiance. Others tried to create pockets of warmth in an otherwise sterile environment, bringing homemade food and forming informal support circles that offered brief relief from isolation. And then there were senior women lawyers who asserted authority in ways that felt deeply unsettling, asking juniors to fetch them water or run personal errands, replicating the same power dynamics they themselves claimed to have suffered under. Watching this, I began to understand how hierarchy reproduces itself, even among those who know its harms intimately.
None of this was taught to me in law school.
Yet, because of the chronic lack of office space, my senior’s practice shifting between cities, and the quiet judgment that awaited women at the canteen tables dominated by male lawyers, the bar room slowly became unavoidable. I found a few friends there, small mercies that made the days bearable. Some shared insights about areas of practice my senior lawyer did not engage in. Others simply shared silence, which, in that space, felt like solidarity. It became routine to see familiar faces, to exchange knowing glances, to sit and wait.
The ladies’ bar room should have been a place of refuge. Instead, it has become a site where idealism waits, erodes, and sometimes dies. And the tragedy is this. When juniors leave the profession, when idealists grow disillusioned, the system does not lose troublemakers. It loses conscience.
I told myself this was part of professional growth, part of learning the real world of litigation. I reminded myself that every profession has its unspoken rules, its uncomfortable rites of passage.
Then something happened that unsettled me far more deeply than awkward silences or unspoken rivalries.
A senior female lawyer, someone who routinely told me that women are not respected in this city and that I should move to Lahore if I wanted dignity, stormed into the bar room one afternoon. I was sitting alone. Without provocation, she shouted at me. I did not respond. I told myself that this, too, was something to endure, another reminder to keep my head down.
A week later, she returned, not with anger, but with gossip.
She went from one woman to another, whispering, leaning in close, pulling out her phone. What she was showing were leaked videos of a female lawyer. She made sure everyone saw them. She narrated the story with authority, dismissing the woman’s claim that her husband had leaked the videos and insisting that the victim was lying. The videos circulated hand to hand, screen to screen, while a room full of women lawyers watched, women trained in law, evidence, and rights.
I refused.
I told her I would not watch the video. I told her she should delete it. I told her she should have shut down the person who sent it to her instead of amplifying the violation. She laughed and said I would see it anyway, if not from her, then from someone else. Her certainty was chilling, not because it was true, but because it reflected how normalized such violations have become.
Outwardly, I stood my ground. Inwardly, I felt as though something had broken.
I had chosen this profession inspired by Asma Jahangir, by her courage, her refusal to bow, her uncompromising belief in dignity. I looked up to women like Nighat Dad, who intervene, who protect, who show up when a woman’s honour is under attack. These were the examples that taught me the law could be a tool for justice, not cruelty, for protection, not spectacle.
And yet here was a senior woman lawyer, someone who constantly spoke of her own suffering, publicly humiliating a colleague, participating in the very violence she claimed to oppose. The contradiction was devastating. It forced me to confront an uncomfortable truth. Representation alone does not guarantee justice. Gender does not automatically produce solidarity.
If the person in those videos had been a man, no one would have questioned his competence. No one would have whispered about his “character.” His career would not have been reduced to a few stolen moments of private life. But for a woman, privacy becomes proof, and violation becomes entertainment. Her body becomes evidence. Her dignity becomes negotiable.
Leaked videos are not “truth.” They are an invasion. They are a crime. And turning them into gossip is not moral vigilance. It is complicity. It is the quiet endorsement of a culture that punishes women for existing outside carefully drawn boundaries.
What shook me most was that every single woman in that room, after watching and listening, said the same thing. “We feel ashamed of being a part of this community.” For the senior lawyer, it may have been just another incident. For the rest of us, it became a memory that refuses to fade, a moment that lodged itself permanently in our understanding of the profession.
Since that day, walking into the courtroom feels different. I am acutely aware of my body, my presence, my gender. I feel as though I am being judged not only as an individual, but as part of a collective that has failed itself. I wonder if merely existing within court premises as a woman invites scrutiny. I wonder if silence is mistaken for consent, and dignity for weakness.
People often say that women lawyers are disrespected in smaller cities. I used to disagree. I believed respect was something we could claim through competence and integrity. Now I understand that disrespect does not only come from men or from institutions. It also comes from within, from senior women who choose power over principle and gossip over solidarity.
The ladies’ bar room should have been a place of refuge. Instead, it has become a site where idealism waits, erodes, and sometimes dies. And the tragedy is this. When juniors leave the profession, when idealists grow disillusioned, the system does not lose troublemakers. It loses conscience.
