Chief Justice Saqib Nisar recently addressed a ceremony with a speech where he said spoke of the “revival of public trust in judiciary is our priority, bar and bench is key to provision of justice.” He went on to further criticize the existing failures of the Supreme Court in relation to its regulation of law colleges or mega corruption.
However, during the speech he also made a certain extremely derogatory remark on women’s clothing and used his archaic sense of metaphorical ‘wisdom’ to make a comment which showed his ‘expertise’ on women’s skirts. This came to light when Pak Tea House shared this video on their Facebook page;
https://www.facebook.com/PakTeaHouseBlog/videos/1972819849396629/
The Chief Justice of Pakistan jokingly added, and i quote; “A speech should be like a woman’s skirt, it should not be too long that one loses the interest and neither too short that it doesn’t cover the subject.”
The comment by Chief Justice Saqib Nisar has brought on mixed reviews with some even praising him for his “amazing wording”;
Some applauded him for his “legit sense of humor”;
While others blamed classic literary writers like Oscar Wilde for the ‘indecent anecdotes’;
However, most people realized this was no joking matter and criticized the CJP for his choice of words;
https://twitter.com/WDF_Pk/status/954827148837126147
However, this isn’t all that shocking considering the multitudes of incidents Pakistani politicians and government officials have hurled sexist and inappropriate comments at their fellow female colleagues.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lVR_OGNbdI4
Pakistan as a nation has only recently started coming to terms with its sexual abuse and harassment epidemic and we are finally having the most vital discussions related to violence and abuse against women and many celebrities and advocates have come up to break ground regarding sexual abuse awareness however, comments like these point to a larger debate regarding how women are represented and treated even at the top most sections of the hierarchy of power.
