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RECENTLY, I wrote about a landmark case decided by the Supreme Court of Pakistan: a woman named Zahida Parveen had appealed a lower court decision which held that benefits accrued to unmarried daughters through their father’s government service did not transfer to married daughters. The SC struck down the lower court ruling and the premise that “married women are the responsibility of their husbands”. Zahida Parveen would have been able to continue in her position as a schoolteacher in Karak, KP — a post once held by her deceased father.
A similar case involving similar issues emerged in the Sindh High Court (SHC) The petitioner, Sarwat Ghazi Uddin, approached the court because the provincial authorities had denied her the pension of her late father. Her father had been an assistant professor at the College Education Department in Sindh prior to his death in January 2023. The petitioner argued that she and her unmarried sister were entitled to their deceased father’s pension. The issue at hand was whether a divorced woman had the same rights as an unmarried daughter under the pension regulations.
In its decision, the SHC went into the history of pension regulations in the province and noted that in 1983, the rules were liberalised to include widowed and divorced daughters among those who could inherit pensions after a father’s death. This was done through an office memorandum amending the 1977 pension rules. It was noted that pension was the right of the bereaved family and that widowed daughters could by no stretch of the imagination be categorised differently from unmarried daughters.
The decision, penned by Justice Nisar Ahmed Bhanbro, is a welcome one. There is no justification for treating widowed, divorced or unmarried daughters differently, as the rationale for inclusion is the same: these women were dependent on their father at the time of his death, and should therefore continue receiving financial support in the form of his government pension. Greater awareness of the 1983 amendment will hopefully prompt other institutions to follow the court’s interpretation and no longer deny claims by divorced or widowed daughters to their father’s pension.
Like men, women must inherit the benefits regardless of marital status.
It is also worth considering the SHC’s decision vis-à-vis the SC’s ruling in the Zahida Parveen case, where the petitioner was neither unmarried, widowed, nor divorced, but still successfully claimed her father’s government position. In the SC case, Justice Mansoor Ali Shah objected to the notion that once a woman is married, she becomes the financial responsibility of her husband. The court held that women must be considered individual legal and financial entities.
If the apex court’s reasoning in Zahida Parveen’s case is to be considered determinative and an indication of the rationale that the court has adopted with regard to women’s financial independence and their rights to inheritance, then the decision in Sarwat Ghazi Uddin’s case could be extended to married daughters as well. This is particularly valuable for women’s rights, as both the inheritance of a job and access to a pension allow them greater financial independence.
Many may overlook these small wins, nestled deep in the texts of court decisions, but these are just the steps that lead to the actual empowerment of ordinary Pakistani women trying to survive in a hostile world. Male family members inherit pensions and jobs regardless of marital status so it follows that woman — who are under the Constitution equal to men — should also be able to inherit any and all benefits regardless of their marital status. While the facts of the case in the SHC may not permit a decision that would state this beyond what the petitioner had asked the court, one hopes to hear about similar cases filed by married women who wants to inherit their fathers’ pension.
That set of facts would allow for the decision made by the apex court to be considered vis-à-vis the rules of inheriting pensions in Sindh. If there are possible petitioners facing such a situation who are reading this, the time to file your case is right now.
Financial independence is crucial for all women and the bedrock of their uplift and empowerment. The SHC should be commended for the role that it has played in ensuring that divorcees and widows, who are most often denied benefits and mistreated by society, get justice.
This is an important step towards the recognition of women as separate enti-ties regardless of their marital status and will undoubtedly help thousands of women in a situation similar to Sarwat Ghazi Uddin.
The writer is an attorney teaching constitutional law and political philosophy.
Published in Dawn, May 3rd, 2025
