Justice Nasira Javid Iqbal is now retired as an icon of female rebels. She had a mother who was a legendary philanthropist and a force in the Pakistan independence movement.

It was always going to be unlikely that a woman with a role model like her mother would be anything other than a change-maker for women in Pakistan. Elevated to the Supreme Court by Benazir Bhutto’s government, she drafted the bill against domestic violence in 2008, made a legal framework for women’s right to land and, when she speaks, her voice echoes with the authenticity of all women’s struggles across class. She said: “A woman has to work twice as hard as a man to achieve half as much.”

Despite a ruckus about the possibility of Pakistan seeing its first woman president when Mamnoon Hussain finishes his term next month, there must be a few realistic expectations about what this ceremonial position will bring to Pakistan. After the 18^th amendment, this position is essentially a glorified benchwarmer and occasional royal waver with a delicate palm.

Iqbal has said: “It is a big mistake when women allow proxy decisions to control their conduct.” Although she said this in a 2012 interview, she may need to revisit this statement.

Prime Minister-elect Imran Khan has recently been seen as largely anti-feminist. In his victory speech, he omitted talking about women entirely.

Iqbal is the daughter-in-law of poet and philosopher Allama Mohammed Iqbal. Whereas I see this as being of no consequence, the fear is that people who retrospectively envision him to have philosophized an exclusivist Pakistan are rejoicing and their joy is scary. Iqbal is a woman in her own right; progressive, intense and completely independent of her family.

She was the elected president of the Lahore High Court Bar Association and is now a vibrant retired woman who has led a full life of contributing to the pluralism of our justice system because of the strength of her truth. These strong convictions — when put alongside what has been said about good women by Khan — will no doubt lead to a clash. This great woman has battled decades of cultural misogyny in Pakistan, and she must school the government every chance she gets.

As a Harvard Law School graduate, a mother, wife, Supreme Court judge, teacher, social worker and human rights activist, Iqbal is the epitome of the person that Khan gravitated away from when he described the ideal woman to a news channel. Only here it is disconcerting because it seems an Oxford graduate, having lived a full life of liberal democratic perks, wants a medieval future for others.

Iqbal is only burdensome to those who constrain her thought into a box. She represents all women who want to live as people and not be a pincushion.

There have been proposals such as Iqbal for the presidency before. In the early part of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto’s premiership in the 1970s, there was a nomination of Begum Shahnawaz. She too was one of Pakistan’s founding mothers. Iqbal is undoubtedly a great fit, but I fear that this nomination could be eyewash.

What happens next depends on the country moving beyond optics and into a real transformation for women.

Aisha Sarwari is co-founder of the Women’s Advancement Hub, a grassroots platform for women to amplify their voices. She has been working on women’s rights for more than 15 years in Pakistan. Twitter: @AishaFSarwari

Courtesy: www.arabnews.pk