By: Laiba Laraib
When I read the Constitution of Pakistan, especially Articles 25, 27, and 34, my heart feels both pride and pain. Pride, because on paper, our founding promise is beautiful: equality for every woman, no discrimination based on sex, the right to work, and the right to fully participate in our nation’s life. Pain, because for millions of women in Pakistan, those words have not yet turned into reality.
As a psychologist, I sit with women every day, women who have been told they are less, women who have lost their inheritance to a brother, women who cannot leave an abusive home because no one will listen. They do not know that the Constitution stands with them. And even when they know, they ask me: “Laiba, if the law is with me, why am I still alone?”
That question breaks my heart. But it also fuels my work.
Yes, we have reserved seats for women in parliament. Yes, we have laws against harassment and discrimination. But between a courtroom and a kitchen, between a police station and a school gate, there is a silence. A silence where girls are married off as children, where women are told to endure, where their voices are called “too loud” or “too emotional.”
I am not just an activist. I am a psychologist. So I will say this clearly: when a woman’s rights are denied, her mind and body remember. Inequality becomes anxiety. Injustice becomes depression. Violence becomes trauma passed down like an unwanted heirloom.
The Constitution is not just a legal document. It is a promise from one human being to another: You matter. You belong. You are equal.
Today, I ask us to keep that promise. Not just in courts and parliaments, but in homes, in streets, in schoolrooms, and in hearts.
Let us not raise daughters who have to fight for what was already written for them. Let us finally turn the Constitution’s ink into action.
By Laiba Laraib
Human Rights Council of Pakistan & Psychologist
