Pakistan, June 18 -- A former minister's remark that women should not join the police force might have passed as another crude social-media provocation had it not echoed a much older and more dangerous assumption: that women may be governed by the state, policed by the state and blamed by the state, but must still ask permission before serving the state. Fawad Chaudhry's comment, made in response to a post about Islamabad Chief Traffic Officer Kainat Azhar Khan, was not merely dismissive of women police officers. In essence, it reduced half the population to an inconvenience in one of the most public-facing arms of government.

This is hardly an isolated incident. We all remember how the Lahore CCPO Umar Sheikh reacted to the Lahore motor...