LAHORE: The Punjab Bar Council (PbBC) has sought an advice from Council of Islamic Ideology (CII) on a quotation ‘discriminatory’ to women published in the bar diary for 2018.

PbBC executive committee’s chairperson Bushra Qamar wrote a letter to the CII chairman, saying the bar had been facing great difficulty to pacify sentiments of women belonging to different fields particularly in legal profession aroused after having gone through the quotation in question. She states the controversy is also being highlighted on social media which needs to be calmed down with some concrete answer.

Ms Qamar requests the CII to furnish its view on the quotation in light of principles of the Holy Quran and Sunnah, hoping for an early response from the CII chairman.

The quotation that irked controversy reads, “The nation which gave unnecessary latitude to women always regretted it one day”.

A facebook page, run by Women Lawyers’ Association, criticised the PBC for publishing a discriminatory quotation in its diary.

“A blatantly sexist page from the lawyers’ diary published by Punjab Bar Council. Women Lawyers’ Association is outraged by this hostile discrimination against women endorsed by the Punjab Bar Council, a body that is supposed to regulate and preserve the integrity of the profession. We demand that the PBC issue an apology for spreading misogyny in a profession that is already unwelcoming for women to begin with,” a post on the page said.

Published in Dawn, October 6th, 2018