GENDER LENS AND STRUCTURAL POWER IN FOSPAH’S ADJUDICATORY PRACTICE: ISSUES AND CHALLENGES

Abstract

This research paper critically explores the adjudicatory practice of the Federal Ombudsperson Secretariat for Protection Against Harassment (FOSPAH) and inquiry committees constituted by departments under the Protection against Harassment of Women at the Workplace Act, 2010. It examines a central question whether FOSPAH’s administrative and quasi-judicial determinations apply a genuinely substantive gender lens, one that incorporates the workplace power hierarchies, trauma responses, and intersecting socio-economic vulnerabilities. It also investigates that whether adjudicatory practices continue to default to formally neutral ‘reasonable person’ standard that inadvertently reproduces systemic gender asymmetries. This study analyses the integration of the ‘reasonable woman’ doctrine into national law, by tracing it back to the restrictive literalism in Nadia Naz case to the watershed review judgement in Nadia Naz case. This paper demonstrates that formal neutrality reinforces the institutional harm, by drawing comparative insights form the landmark decision of United States Ninth Circuit in Ellison v. Braddy and the substantive equality framework of the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). In order to resolve these structural deficits, the paper outlines a substantive gender & power model designed to align FOSPAH’s adjudicative practice with constitutional mandates and international obligations