The Global Gender Gap Report 2025 by the World Economic Forum once again ranked Pakistan at the bottom of the global index — 148th out of 148 countries. Pakistan’s overall gender parity score also slightly declined from 57 percent in 2024 to 56.7 percent in 2025. These numbers are hardly surprising. They show the inequalities that Pakistani women face daily across social freedoms, economic participation and independence, political representation, education, health, and overall personal agency and autonomy.
Statistics and lived experiences point toward inequalities, where violence against women is widespread. For women and young girls, navigating public spaces remains challenging even after decades of legislation, women’s rights activism, and work by several organizations, both domestic and international, like U.N. Women in Pakistan, Oxfam and so on. Yet, gender disparity, discussions of women’s rights and violence against women are among some of the most contentious subjects in Pakistan.
Educational institutions, workplaces, markets, public transport, and even the home, which is often regarded as the safest place — none has spared women from violence. Earlier this month, a woman doctor on duty in a public hospital in Balochistan’s capital of Quetta was brutally attacked with acid by the hospital’s lift operator.
The incident shocked the country and was widely condemned. Public outrage and protests erupted in many parts of Pakistan demanding the safety of working women, a ban on the sale of acid and a greater emphasis on implementation of the anti-acid attack legislation. At the same time, many people took to social media, insisting that “there must have been a reason” for the attack.
But no reason can justify such a heinous crime. The perpetrator was shot dead at the train station by the police when he was about to leave the city, though further investigations into the case are still ongoing.
This also presents a common mindset in Pakistani society: When women become victims of violence, they are often blamed and put on trial by public opinion. Such opinions often question women’s choices and their participation in public spaces to begin with.
In terms of acid attacks, there are no official statistics in Pakistan. An estimated 200 cases are reported every year, though, like the majority of cases of violence against women, many such cases are never reported.
According to World Bank data, women only make up 22 percent of Pakistan’s total labor force. Economic exclusion is already a major barrier and cases like the recent acid attack within the premises of a public hospital further discourage women from pursuing professional careers. Such incidents also trigger fear among families that choose to invest in their daughters’ education despite social and economic challenges.
The women’s labor force participation in Pakistan is already one of the lowest in the region, and half of the women in Pakistan over the age of 15 have no education whatsoever. This places them in a more vulnerable position — no education means very limited chances of economic and social participation and mobility.
Data indicates that a large number of educated women in Pakistan often stay at home and never get to put their education to productive use, often not out of choice, but because of family pressure and decisions made for them by male family members, especially fathers, brothers, and husbands.
Data also indicates that 23 percent of all women in Pakistan have reported experiencing physical and sexual violence from their spouse.
The recent acid attack incident in Quetta is just one of the many cases that have restarted conversations about women’s safety in Pakistan. Here are a sampling of cases from June 2026 alone. A 17-year-old college student was kidnapped, raped, and abandoned at a hospital. A minor girl who was kidnapped three years ago, while an eighth-class student, was recovered from Karachi; she had been kept locked inside and gave birth during her captivity. An 18-year-old housemaid died in a hospital after allegedly being subjected to repeated rape by her employer’s son and his driver over the course of a year.
In March 2026, a young woman from Rawalpindi was murdered by her father and former husband after a jirga rejected her choice to remarry. These are only a few of the cases that made it to the news and captured national attention; thousands of such cases are never documented. Even small girls are not immune from sexual assault; in one case that shocked the nation a 5-year-old was raped and then burned to death.
Although all these cases are different in circumstances, together they show a pattern of violence that is evident across age, class, and geography. The nature of violence might differ, but the sequence of public conversation is often the same. It begins with outrage and demands for justice, followed by attempts to either explain or justify the crime, and eventually silence – until the next incident makes news and circulates in social media.
Pakistan is not short of legislation meant to protest women. In the last two decades, several pro-women laws were passed in the country’s provincial and federal assemblies. These include the Balochistan Domestic Violence (Prevention and Protection) Act of 2014, Protection Against Harassment of Women at Workplace Act 2016, Anti-rape (Investigation and Trial) Act 2021, Women Protection Act of 2006, and the Acid Control and Acid Crime Prevention Act (2011).
While the passage of recent laws is evidence that violence against women is a serious national issue, laws alone cannot change lived realities. When conviction rates in such cases also remain very low, perpetrators believe they can do anything without facing consequences, which is the reality of most cases.
Until the existing laws are strongly implemented across the country, perpetrators are held accountable and prosecuted, and women are able to exercise their rights and agency without violence and fear, Pakistan’s position at the bottom of the Global Gender Gap report is not likely to change.
