GENDER CONSTRUCTION IN LEGAL DISCOURSE: A FEMINIST CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF ANTI-RAPE (INVESTIGATION AND TRIAL) ACT, 2021 IN PAKISTAN

Abstract

This study critically examines how gender, agency, and power are discursively constructed in Pakistan’s Anti-Rape (Investigation and Trial) Act, 2021 .While the Act is widely presented as a progressive legal reform aimed at protecting rape survivors and strengthening accountability, little attention has been paid to the ideological work performed by its language. Drawing on Michelle Lazar’s Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis and Halliday’s Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), this qualitative study conducts a clause-by-clause analysis of selected substantive and procedural provisions of the Act. The analysis focuses on transitivity patterns, modality, and thematic organization to uncover how legal language constructs rape, consent, survivor agency, and institutional authority. The findings reveal that despite reformist intent, the Act predominantly represents rape as a penetration-based physical act, frames consent as a circumstantial condition rather than an affirmative obligation, and positions survivors as passive recipients of state protection. Institutional actors, particularly the police and courts, are consistently foregrounded as agents of justice, reflecting a state-centric and punitive model of gender justice. From an FCDA perspective, the study argues that the Act simultaneously challenges overtly misogynistic practices while reproducing subtler forms of patriarchal and heteronormative ideology. The study concludes that without discursive reform alongside procedural change, legal interventions risk reinforcing the very gendered power relations they seek to dismantle.