WOMEN’S POLITICAL EMPOWERMENT IN SOUTH ASIA: A STUDY OF PAKISTAN

Abstract

Women empowerment is the freedom of women from the vicious grips of various social, political, economic, and cultural discriminations. Empowering women refers to capacity building to manage a more rewarding and enriched life on their own behalf. The current article has focused on political empowerment of women with the specific reference of Pakistan. Political empowerment was taken as independent variable which is measured by women’s representation in national, provincial and local legislative bodies while using the following indicators; Women’s representational ratio in parliament, women’s representational ratio in presidency and premiership, women’s representational ratio in ministership at national as well as at provincial level, and the women’s representational ratio in local governance. In Pakistan, the women representation in the electoral and legislative process has been very marginal since its inception. In recent general elections of 2018, election commission of Pakistan in election Act 2017, made it mandatory to allocate at least 5% tickets to the women candidates of all the political parties as well as 10% women votes in every constituency for the validation of election. This should be appreciated; however, women representation in its true and complete sense is still lacked behind.