Kashmala Tariq

Kashmala Tariq was born on January 24, 1972 in Lahore. She was a member of the National Assembly of Pakistan from the Women Reserve Constituency NA-277 for the province of Punjab. She belongs to the Pakistan Muslim League (Quaid-e-Azam) or PML-Q. She is also actively involved in women's rights.

Kashmala graduated from the Lahore School of Economics (LSE) in 1998 with a major in International Trade Laws (Banking and Finance). She is an Alumna of the London School of Economics.

She was elected Students Union President at Lahore School of Economics (LSE). She worked as corporate lawyer with a leading law firm for eight years and later got elected as Member National parliament in 2002. She got re-elected as Member National Assembly of Pakistan (MNA) in 2008. She was a member of Pakistan People’s Party.

She was elected as Chairperson of Commonwealth Women Parliamentarians in CPA Annual conference held in India in 2007. She got elected by female MPs of 125 legislatures of 53 commonwealth member countries. Prior to this, she also served as Vice Chair of Commonwealth Women Parliamentarians (CWP) and member of steering committee representing Asian region.

She sat on three standing committees of parliament i.e. Law, Justice and Human Rights, Finance and Revenue and Trade and Commerce.

She introduced two bills regarding women in parliament, on honour killings and amendments to the Hudood Ordinance respectively. She is among the critics of the Hudood Ordinance and questions its legitimacy in Islamic theology as claimed by the proponents. She identifies laws on gender discrimination, sexual harassment scandal and domestic violence among her priority issues and criticizes the feudal mindset along with a male-dominated culture as hindering progress and laws in these areas.

In March 2005, when Tariq's sponsored bill on Karo-kari (honour killing) was rejected by voice vote in the National Assembly, she criticized the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) calling its leaders ‘self-styled’ experts on Islam saying they were exploiting Islam and the constitution and that they used Quranic verses to suit their points of view. Kashmala Tariq had suggested 3 amendments related to the issue of Wali (legal male guardian), compoundability and the remission of sentence but the opposition, i.e. MMA and Law Minister Wasi Zafar opposed the bill calling it "un-islamic".

However, she opposed a bill on reproductive health in June 2012 stating that it was not in conformity of Islamic laws and was too controversial.

In August 2006 as a member of the NA Select Committee on Women’s Protection Bill, Kashmala proposed that a husband, who had sex with his wife without her consent should be tried under rape charges. Due to outspoken manner against corruption and nepotism, her party sought to have her expelled from the party. She maintains that the driving forces behind her opponents are an anti-woman mind set and corruption in politics.

On September 24, 2007, she was elected to chair the Commonwealth Women Parliamentarians from 2007 to 2010.

In July 2011, Kashmala was a candidate for the Chairperson of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association. She lost the first round of the election to Ms Fiamé Mata’afa, the Samoan Minister of Justice and Sir Alan Haselhurst, MP from the United Kingdom. Sir Alan was eventually elected as the chairperson in the runoff.

Kashmala Tariq is married and has one daughter and a son.