Lawyer launches campaign against harassment at LHC

Women lawyers take up self-defence classes.

LAHORE:

“We have to shift the spotlight from the victim to the perpetrator of the offense,” says Amna Ajmal about her recent initiative to raise awareness about sexual harassment at the workplace  specifically her workplace, the Lahore High Court.

Ajmal, a lawyer for the past ten years, says that a high percentage of women who work in the law have faced sexual harassment. It is something that she has seen at close quarters when it happened to a relative, leading to much mental trauma for the victim and her family and spurring her to launch her anti-harassment initiative. She says that it is often the victim of harassment who suffers socially, rather than the harasser.

On Tuesday, Ajmal led an awareness session on sexual harassment at the Lahore High Court. As a small audience of around 10 lawyers listened at the Karachi Shuhada Hall of the LHC, she spoke about the lack of public discourse on the subject.

Adviser to the Chief Minister Zakia Shahnawaz failed to make it to the event and MPA Arifa Khalid spoke in her place as the chief guest. Khalid, in addition to noting the high rate of sexual harassment at the workplace, also criticised working women.

“It’s as important for working women to realise and understand their social and moral limits as it is for their male colleagues,” she said. She added that young women in particular needed educating about this upon entering a professional career.

Several of the listening lawyers agreed with this. “In our times, our seniors were very particular of the dress code and the behaviour of young professionals,” Ayesha Qazi, a lawyer for 15 years, told The Express Tribune. She said this helped maintain a degree of professionalism at the workplace.

Qazi said that a code of conduct at the workplace should be established and implemented. “The workplace has a dignity of its own,” she said.

She lamented that the victims of sexual harassment often avoided talking about the issue. “The sad part is that these women, some of whom are our own colleagues, continue to tolerate this behaviour,” she said.

Feroza Malik, who also practises law at the LHC, said though women generally faced sexual harassment at the workplace and the law was a male-dominated profession, there was no question of her being harassed. “I do not tolerate harassment even in the subtlest of forms,” she said. She added that there were no safeguards at the workplace to protect women from sexual harassment.

Ajmal said she had faced criticism from colleagues, male and female, about her initiative.

“I have been accused of spreading indecency at the court premises by openly talking about harassment,” she said. Her answer to such accusations, she said, was simple.

“When the offenders of such heinous acts are not ashamed, why should I be ashamed of speaking out against it?”

She said she would continue to conduct awareness and discussion sessions at the LHC and engage with not just lawyers but also civil society. “We have invited our male colleagues to share their concerns too,” she said.

And public discourse is not the only empowerment tool Ajmal is urging her colleagues to pick up. Earlier, she arranged a self-defence class for women lawyers in which they were taught martial arts techniques.

“As many as 20 lawyers showed up for the first session. Many colleagues later requested that they be included,” she said, adding that the course teaching basic self-defence was continuing for a month.

“Women are subjected to all sorts of physical harassment at the workplace. We need to know how to physically protect ourselves,” she said.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 11^th, 2012.