Women in politics

The Free and Fair Election Network (FAFEN)’s report, ‘Women Parliamentarians Performance 2018-2019’, evaluated the performance of women parliamentarians in Pakistan by focusing on their contribution to parliamentary business.

The study found that, whereas women constituted about 20 percent (or one-fifth) of the total combined membership of both houses of parliament, they contributed 33 percent (or one-third) to the parliamentary business. The average attendance of parliamentary sessions by women members of either house was also significantly higher than their male counterparts.

Although national level parliamentary politics is the most noticeable, and in some ways a more impactful, level of political participation, women’s participation in politics is hardly limited to that level. While there is limited data about the level of women participation in politics at the local level, the data that exists paints a similar picture of women's participation and performance in the local government institutions.

For instance, a 2004 CIET study titled ‘Social Audit of Governance and Delivery of Services’ highlighted that, in general, the respondents to their study expressed greater satisfaction with the performance of women councilors than of male councilors.

The above statistics provide an encouraging, but only a partial, view of the accomplishments of women in Pakistani politics. In evaluating the performance of women politicians, one has to also take into account the considerable structural challenges, both social and political, they have to contend with in carrying out their responsibilities.

The foremost challenge, of course, starts even before women actively participate in politics. Politics everywhere, and more so in Pakistan, is considered a man’s domain. Women are often explicitly and implicitly discouraged from taking part – since politics is supposed to be a ‘dirty business’. This is especially true for Pakistan, where women are the representative of a delicate sense of honor. Political ambitions for women, therefore, in most cases perish at the outset.

If a woman does indeed cross the initial barriers to active political participation through her own determination or a rare encouraging environment, her success in electoral politics is rendered limited by short-term political pragmatism and unfavorable social attitudes.

As a former woman parliamentarian put it to me, “As unfortunate as it sounds, it only makes sense for the leaders of a political party to not award election tickets to women party members, since most of the constituents have this misplaced notion that an elected woman member of parliament or a member of a local government body will not be able to actively engage in matters that are in predominantly male space, such as thana and hujra.”

It is hard to see many women succeeding in electoral politics when politics is dictated by such social attitudes. Therefore, it was reasonable to allocate and reserve seats for women in parliaments and local government bodies.

Pakistan made a significant stride forward when Gen Musharraf’s government increased the number of reserved seats for women at all levels of politics. One would expect that women by finding a seat at the table, even if they are still much fewer in number, would be able to focus on the task at hand in the same manner as their male colleagues. However, that is hardly the reality.

Women representatives on reserved seats face the charge of elitism. It is often claimed that these women parliamentarians hail from certain prominent political families and that they have made it to parliament on the back of that family name.

The charge is not entirely untrue. One hopes that parliament, or any representative body for that matter, is more closely representative of the population it is supposed to represent. However, it is ironic that the same charge of a lack of true representativity is not considered disqualifying for men in houses of parliament.

I do not think that anyone can argue with any level of conviction that the male parliamentarians in general represent a truer demographic snapshot of the country. Further, some claim that, whereas male parliamentarians, even if they also come from a higher socioeconomic background, are at least directly elected by people they represent. However, the same argument is rarely, if ever, repeated for men in elected bodies that are indirectly elected, such as the Senate.

Inside parliament, women legislators face a different set of challenges. The FAFEN report also describes that although proportionately greater legislative business is initiated by women members, fewer of these initiatives are actually adopted by parliament.

Enhancing women representation in politics is important not because it is good optics, but because it demonstrably leads to better governance outcomes.

The writer is an assistant professor of political science at the University of Peshawar.

Email: aameraza@gmail.com