Female parliamentarians in Pakistan call for mandatory quotas for higher representation

Women from four provincial assemblies and civil society organizations in Pakistan called to protect the provision of reserved seats for women in the National Assembly, Senate, and provincial assemblies in accordance with the Constitution.

Female parliamentarians also demand that political parties develop consensus among themselves to amend the Political Parties Act to provide a mandatory quota of 10% of general seats for women in order to mainstream them into the electoral process. They would like this to happen before the next elections. They maintained that the provision of the reserved seats for women was the Constitutional right of women in Pakistan under Articles 25, 34, 51, and 106.

The female parliamentarians maintain that their role in assemblies helped to initiate debates on issues of women’s empowerment both within and outside legislatures, and eventually lead to a key role in law-making on crucial issues which concern all citizens, especially women and the disadvantaged. They vowed to reiterate the commitment made by the Women’s Parliamentary Caucus at a Roundtable on September 29, 2011, that declared: “we further commit to enhance and strengthen women’s representation in legislatures by working within our respective political parties and elected representatives.”

Recently, governments in more than 100 countries have adopted mandatory quotas for the selection of female candidates to political office. For example, in the newly inaugurated country of South Sudan a 25% quota has been set for women’s parliamentary representation In many countries campaigns are being introduced to promote female interest and participation, such as the “Don’t get mad: get elected” campaign. These mandatory quotas differ across countries in varied ways, such as reserved seats (such as in Pakistan and India), party quotas (such as in Sweden and the United Kingdom), and legislative quotas (such as in Argentina and France). Representation can be representation-by-population, representation-by-area, or other forms of representation.

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