The Digital Backlash: Pakistan’s Broken Pledge on Gender Equality

By Hija Kamran

Thirty years ago, Pakistan signed onto the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, committing to an ambitious vision of gender equality. Fast forward to today, and that vision remains just that – a vision – hindered by a political landscape that silences dissent, a digital ecosystem that amplifies inequality, and a regulatory regime that prioritises control over empowerment.

Adopted at the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995, the BPfA wasn’t just a document – it was the culmination of years of movement-building, cross-border solidarity, and relentless advocacy of women’s rights groups. It set out a bold vision for gender justice, rallying 189 UN member states around 12 critical areas of concern.

Source: UN

A landmark document that has stood the test of time, the BPfA remains just as relevant today as it was 30 years ago. But while its core principles endure, the world has changed, bringing new challenges, technologies, and power dynamics that demand a revision of its framework to reflect today’s realities. Gender equality in 2025 isn’t just about political representation or economic opportunity; it’s also about digital rights, online safety, and the growing influence of technology in shaping freedoms and oppressions alike.

As authoritarian regimes tighten their grip on power and roll back civil liberties, the conversation around gender equality and justice is shifting. The patriarchal governance models they uphold aren’t just incidental – they are deliberate, reinforcing anti-rights and anti-gender agendas that make public spaces increasingly unsafe for women and gender minorities. These are the very groups the BPfA was meant to protect, yet its vision cannot be fully realised unless we confront these evolving threats head-on. Revisiting our approach is no longer optional; it’s essential. The world has changed, and so must our strategies to defend and advance gender justice in an era of shrinking freedoms.

As I argue in my Expert Paper to UN Women titled, “Charting the Future: Revisiting Beijing’s Commitments in the Digital Era”, it is crucial for gender justice advocates as well as the governments to ask, “How would you draft the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action if you were writing it today?”

One immediate step forward is recognising the undeniable influence of our digital realities. In a world of hyper-digitisation, the boundaries between online and offline life have disappeared – what happens in one sphere inevitably shapes the other. From surveillance, harassment and censorship to state and patriarchal violence to limited access and agency, the digital realm is both a reflection of and a frontline for gender justice. Any meaningful gender equality agenda must do more than just acknowledging this. It must embed the digital justice agenda at its core, ensuring that the advocacy for rights extends to the very platforms and technologies that shape our daily lives.

Pakistan’s Outlook of Gender Equality

Pakistan’s commitment to gender equality under the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action took shape in 1998 with the introduction of its first National Plan of Action for Women. This laid the groundwork for the establishment of the National Commission on the Status of Women (NCSW) in 2000 – a statutory body tasked with monitoring government efforts on gender equality, advocating for women’s empowerment, and fostering collaboration with civil society, private sector, and international partners. The 2002 National Policy for Development and Empowerment of Women, along with the Gender Policy Framework in 2022 which marked another milestone, acknowledging gender-based violence as a systemic issue in Pakistan’s deeply patriarchal society and outlining policy-level strategies to combat it. On paper, these initiatives aimed to create an inclusive, safer and more enabling environment for women, but the reality on the ground has often told a different story.

Beijing Declaration is one of the very few international human rights processes that governments around the world are still dedicated towards and submit review reports to the UN every 5 years. Pakistan has mostly been consistent to this process, with the latest report submitted in September 2024. The report mentions that the years after the BPfA, the Pakistan government has made “a series of legislative and administrative reforms, empowering institutions and political leaders to champion the cause of women’s empowerment and gender equality including progressive laws on women empowerment […].”

While the report details the government’s efforts over the past five years to advance gender equality in line with the BPfA, it remains glaringly silent on the many restrictions it has imposed – barriers that have actively hindered progress rather than enabled it. Citing the Aurat March as a success story, the report conveniently ignores the rampant violence – both online and offline – that organisers and participants face each year that often receive institutional impunity. Instead of protecting their right to peaceful assembly, authorities either turn a blind eye or weaponise existing laws to silence and discredit them, undermining the very commitments the report claims to uphold.

The existing legal framework in Pakistan is mostly cognisant of the needs of the women and girls in the country and to meet the gender equality agendas that the country has committed on international levels, however, the problem arises during the implementation of the law coupled with the extremely patriarchal, misogynistic and violent society that we navigate in. This violence then is actively transferred in the digital spaces as the access and usage of digital platforms increases in the country.

As of 2024, the GSMA Gender Gap Report reveals a complex picture of digital access in Pakistan. The gender gap in mobile ownership has widened in the past 5 years, rising from 37% in 2019 to 38% in 2024. However, there has been a notable shift in mobile internet adoption, the gap has narrowed from 71% in 2019 to 38% in 2024. This suggests that while more women are coming online, the slow progress in phone ownership points to deeper societal barriers. On the surface, increased internet usage appears to be a step toward bridging the gap in gendered access to public spaces, but the growing disparity in ownership raises critical questions about patriarchal and political control, affordability, and systemic exclusion due to increasing violence. Digital spaces remain largely unprepared for women’s safe participation, leaving them vulnerable to harm. This is evident in the latest Cyber Harassment Helpline data from January 2025, which recorded 191 complaints in a single month, 166 of them directly related to cyber harassment. That’s at least five cases every day, pointing towards the urgent need for stronger protections and a digital landscape that prioritises safety over mere access.

In Pakistan, the gender digital divide is as much a patriarchal issue as it is economic, infrastructural, political, or societal. While affordability and geographic location play a significant role in limiting women’s mobile ownership and internet access, family-imposed restrictions are just as decisive. A study I co-authored for Media Matters for Democracy found that even in households without financial or infrastructural barriers, women often need permission from male family members to own or use a mobile phone. In lower-income settings, digital access is often a matter of priority – one that favors men’s entertainment over women’s education. This was particularly evident during COVID-19 when online learning became a necessity, yet many women and girls were denied access to digital devices.

Beyond structural barriers, the gender digital divide is deepened by the pervasive threats of cyber harassment and online violence that women and gender minorities face daily. Studies show that many are forced to either leave digital platforms entirely or self-censor to protect themselves from relentless abuse.

A significant share of the blame for unsafe digital spaces falls on Big Tech, which continues to profit from the very violence women face online. It is no secret that harmful content drives engagement, and more engagement means higher profits. While platforms like Facebook, TikTok, and previously Twitter have pledged to make digital spaces safer for women in Pakistan, their failure to act meaningfully is evident in the unchecked gender-based violence that persists across these platforms. For instance, much of the backlash against Aurat March unfolds online, while the recent wave of attacks against transgender communities was observed to be largely fuelled on Instagram. YouTube, often escaping scrutiny due to its classification as a video platform rather than a social media app, plays an equally enabling role in amplifying harmful narratives.

To compliment this, the failure of law enforcement and legal systems to provide recourse only compounds the problem. With authorities often untrained or insensitive to the nature of online harassment, and tech companies being disconnected from the interests and safety of its users, women are left with little trust in the very institutions meant to protect them.

Anti-Gender Movements

Pakistan has a long history of anti-rights and anti-gender movements, which have resisted gender justice efforts in the country. From the violent backlash against feminist organisers protesting the Hudood Ordinance in the 1980s to the relentless online and offline attacks on Aurat March organisers and trans rights activists today, the repression has not only persisted but evolved. What was once state-led crackdowns has now morphed into a multifaceted assault, combining digital threats, legal harassment, and public intimidation to silence those advocating for gender equality.

Aurat March has grown into a nationwide movement, organising annual gatherings in major cities. It has sparked critical discussions on some of the most pressing barriers to gender justice in Pakistan’s deeply patriarchal society, including marital rape, the unequal division of domestic labour highlighted by placards like “Apna khana khud garam karo,” transgender rights, and violence against minority communities. As a result, it has faced relentless violence both online and offline, with extremist groups attacking marchers with stones and bricks, and organisers being accused of blasphemy – an allegation that carries the death penalty under Pakistan’s legal system. This is further augmented by the repeated refusal to grant organising permits for the marches, reinforcing the perception that backlash against the women’s rights movement is not only tolerated but legitimised.

March organisers are frequently accused of being foreign-funded, a familiar tactic used to delegitimise activists and human rights defenders who challenge the status quo. Blasphemy cases have been filed against them, and they are routinely subjected to coordinated online campaigns designed to discredit the movement. In the face of this hostility, legal frameworks have been weaponised to curtail their fundamental rights, including the right to peaceful assembly, freedom of association, freedom of expression, and privacy.

Similarly, the transgender rights movement in Pakistan has faced relentless efforts to discredit the existence and personhood of transgender individuals, despite their legal recognition under the country’s laws. Trans rights activists have worked for decades to secure this recognition while also challenging the deep-rooted stigma against transgender identities in society. Their advocacy has led to significant progress, including the appointment of transgender individuals to parliament and legal protections in employment. It also resulted in a landmark law that upheld the right to self-determination and guaranteed transgender individuals their rightful share in inheritance – rights that even some of the most progressive democracies have yet to fully implement.

However, despite these legal protections, societal violence and discrimination remain major barriers to achieving social justice and basic human rights for the transgender community. In recent years, there has been a surge in coordinated online campaigns attacking transgender identities and calling for the revocation of their legal status. These campaigns have gained traction among religious extremist groups, who have actively lobbied to dismantle the right to self-determination and inheritance protections enshrined in the Transgender Persons Protection of Rights Act 2018.

This organised backlash not only exposes the deeply ingrained misogyny and transphobia in Pakistani society but also highlights how pervasive and legitimised these narratives have become within corridors of power. The weaponisation of digital platforms like Twitter, Instagram and YouTube further reflects how such hatred resonates with wider society, enabling people to extend this violence within their own circles and reinforcing its presence in mainstream discourse. The mob mentality has led to both online and offline attacks against transgender individuals, while the legal and justice system continues to prove woefully inadequate in addressing the escalating threats and violence they face.

Escalating Digital Crackdown

Pakistan has seen a growing wave of digital authoritarianism, where policymaking is driven by power rather than a rights-based approach. This trend is evident in the country’s recent internet and technology regulations, where the government relies on vague and arbitrary notions of national security to justify its increasing control over technology. It is no secret that this justification has long been the bane of Pakistanis’ rights, wielded repeatedly by the state to stifle civil liberties. The constitution itself allows for exceptions to fundamental rights such as freedom of expression and privacy under the pretext of national security, a loophole that has been consistently exploited.

The passage of the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act in 2016 marked a significant step in this crackdown, with successive governments introducing draconian amendments to further weaponise an already restrictive law against dissenting voices. In January 2025, a new amendment was passed without any public consultation, criminalising so-called fake news in digital spaces. The vague nature of this provision is deeply concerning, not only because false information is notoriously difficult to regulate but also because such laws are often used as tools of repression against activists, journalists, dissidents, and marginalised communities. The inability to reliably track the origin of false information means that merely sharing or engaging with certain content can result in imprisonment for up to three years and fines of up to two million rupees.

Alongside this, the government has been relentless in its multi-year effort to regulate virtual private networks in an attempt to crack down on encrypted communications, again citing national security as its rationale. This is a direct assault on the right to privacy and the right to access to information online, particularly in a country where censorship of online content is rampant. This crackdown intensified in February 2024 when authorities blocked Twitter – a key platform for political discourse, further narrowing the space for free expression.

In a court proceeding, it was also revealed that the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) had directed telecom companies to implement the Lawful Intercept Management System (LIMS), enabling real-time surveillance of at least four million citizens’ telecom activities at any given time. This is despite legal precedents in Pakistan that have ruled mass surveillance unlawful. Yet, these measures continue to be implemented without any public disclosure or accountability.

Each of these initiatives is a direct assault on civil liberties, systematically eroding Pakistanis’ rights to privacy, freedom of expression, access to information, and peaceful assembly, among others. For persecuted communities, these measures create an even more hostile environment, making the pursuit of justice an increasingly distant prospect.

Towards Gender Justice

In Pakistan, the evolving landscape of gender justice has encountered a new challenge in the digital age, one that demands attention, critical analysis, and a renewed, more aggressive, approach. As technology increasingly becomes a tool against the acquisition and protection of rights in public and private domains, the intersection of digital rights and gender equality is a crucial modification for social justice.

What’s clear now is that digital justice isn’t merely an adjacent concern to gender justice – it’s the key component. The gender equality agenda must engage with questions of digital rights, access, and safety. Without addressing these technological dimensions, efforts toward gender justice will remain incomplete, unable to fully confront the evolving nature of gender-based discrimination and oppression in our increasingly connected world.

This recognition demands a shift in how we approach gender justice advocacy in Pakistan on a state level. The Beijing+30 review process is an important event to analyse the future of gender equality and the government’s intentions to meet the commitment of key international human rights policy documents like the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action. It requires an international effort and commitment to develop frameworks that look at digital justice as the central approach to gender justice. Only through such an integrated and holistic approach can we hope to achieve meaningful progress toward gender equality in the digital age.