Women

Introduction

As a premier research organization of Pakistan
focusing on democracy, governance and public policy analysis
, PILDAT’s analyses are aimed at providing practical recommendations and options
to policy makers and to generate an informed public discourse on key areas of
governance and democracy. Our work has contributed to shaping critical policies
as well as broadened the public and media discourse on following key areas:

  • Parliamentary Development
  • Parliamentary Monitoring
  • Assessment of Quality of Democracy
  • Elections and Electoral Reforms
  • Civil-Military Relations
  • Political Parties
  • Assessment of Quality of Governance
  • Youth
  • Right to Information
  • Rule of Law

With 48% of female population in the country, gender remains
a cross-cutting focus across all of PILDAT’s programmes and initiatives. Under
each one of PILDAT’s key initiatives mentioned above, both women and men have
been key stakeholders and beneficiaries. Since most of PILDAT’s work focuses
on institutional strengthening, capability building, enhancing understanding
through evidence-based research, analysis and advocacy, PILDAT has continued
to contribute to women’s political and policy participation and empowerment.

Political Empowerment of Women

Since its inception, PILDAT has focussed on strengthening
Pakistan’s legislatures as well as elected representatives, including women.
PILDAT has been actively engaged with building the capabilities of elected Legislators
towards a better discharge of their functions of Legislation, Representation
and Oversight. PILDAT regularly conducts training/briefing workshops
and sessions for Legislators belonging to the National Assembly and the Senate
of Pakistan, 4 Provincial Assemblies as well as 2 Legislative Assemblies of
Azad Jammu & Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan.

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Under this stream, PILDAT has especially conceptualised, designed
and delivered capacity building, policy advocacy and reform initiatives especially
aimed to strengthen women’s political and legislative involvement. A snapshot
of major initiatives is given below:

Women Representation in Pakistan’s Parliament

Such a focus is placed by PILDAT on women’s political empowerment
that it chose the theme of Women Representation in Pakistan’s Parliament as
the launching of the USAID-funded Project of Strengthening National and Provincial
Legislatures of Pakistan in February 2004. A PILDAT background paper titled
WOMEN REPRESENTATION IN PAKISTAN’S PARLIAMENT preceded the Workshop.
The speakers at the Workshop included the then-US Ambassador Nancy Powell, among
others and underscored the PILDAT focus of recognition of women as major stakeholders
in the efforts towards improving democratic governance in Pakistan.

Parliamentary Consultative Group on Women’s Issues

In 2004, PILDAT pioneered the initiative of facilitating and
establishing the first-ever multi-party Parliamentary Caucus on
Women’s Issues in Pakistan’s Parliament. The Caucus, that worked through
the term of the 12th National Assembly of Pakistan elected in 2002,
formed the basis of the Women’s Parliamentary
Caucus of Pakistan established by the Parliament in 2008.

The multi-party Parliamentary Caucus on Women’s Issues
was facilitated by PILDAT to bring together like-minded parliamentarians across
party lines to highlight and address women’s issues. PILDAT believed that increased
women representation in Pakistan’s Parliament lent a unique opportunity to women
legislators to work with their male colleagues to effectively influence and
accelerate the process of highlighting and resolving issues faced by women in
Pakistan. The caucus, therefore, invited, membership from both female and male
parliamentarians to resolve to address women’s issues and had senior representation
from major political parties represented in the Parliament at that time including
the PML-Q, MMAP, PPPP and MQM. The Caucus adopted a Constitution and continued
to work towards identifying and highlighting key issues facing women such as
supply of safe drinking water, etc.

Capacity building of Women Committee Chairs of Parliament

PILDAT conceptualised, designed and undertook capacity building
of Women Committee Chairs of Parliament. The need was felt as owing to unprecedented
increase in the number of reserved seats for women in the Pakistani Parliament.
A special needs assessment of women MPs was conducted by PILDAT in which most
women MPs, barring a select few exceptions, revealed that they required political
and legislative orientation in order to engage in effective and meaningful representation
in the Parliament. In specific, 17 out of a total of 74 Committees of the Senate
and the National Assembly, chaired by Women MPs, required accentuated capacity
building to deliver the demands of managing multi-party committees, ensuring
legislative oversight of the executive and working with the public. The PILDAT
project, funded by British High Commission, delivered special training/capacity
building sessions to build capacities of women chairpersons of Parliamentary
committees.

Young Parliamentarian Forum

Enhancing capabilities of women to discharge their representative
roles effectively was also supplemented by PILDAT’s focus on developing the
capabilities of the young legislators, largely female, in Pakistan’s Parliament.
PILDAT facilitated the formation of a Young Parliamentarians’ Forum (YPF) in
April 2003 by inviting young legislators of Pakistan from both the Senate and
the National Assembly to be members of the YPF. The YPF was created by PILDAT.
in view of the fact that quite a large percentage of MPs (26% MNAs and 12% Senators
in 2002-2003) was under the age of 40 years and, in most cases, was elected
for the first time. PILDAT felt that there was a need to establish a platform
where they could share ideas, build inter-party and inter-regional networks
and develop legislative and leadership skills. While PILDAT served as Secretariat
of the Forum until the 13th National Assembly after which the young
MPs were encouraged to take the lead of the Forum inside Parliament, the Forum
was assisted by PILDAT to adopt its Constitution and elect office bearers that
included young female legislators as Secretary (Dr. Donya Aziz, MNA PML-Q);
and Joint Secretary (Ms. Asiya Nasir, MNA MMA) in the 12th
National Assembly. In the 13th National Assembly, the YPF was facilitated
by PILDAT to elect Executive Committee and Office Bearers who included Mr. Faisal
Karim Kundi, Deputy Speaker, as Patron of Young Parliamentarians Forum while
other office bearers include Dr. Donya Aziz, MNA (PML) as President;
Ms. Farzana Raja, MNA (PPPP) Vice President; Ms. Anusha Rahman Khan,
MNA (PML-N),Secretary and Ms. Asiya Nasir, MNA (JUI-F) as Joint
Secretary. The YPF continues to function inside Parliament after the 2013
General Election with Ms.  Shaza Fatima Khawaja, MNA PML-N as General Secretary
and Ms. Romina Khurshid Alam, MNA PML-N as Media Coordinator. With PILDAT’s
facilitation and assistance, the YPF created its website, http://ypf.org.pk/worked
on a reform agenda for change of parliamentary procedures and lobbied for it
in both houses, held Training Sessions aimed at enhancing capacities of young
MPs as YPF members and organised two YPF Study Visits to Germany to interact
with young German MPs and Study Visit to India to provide Young Pakistani legislators
with an opportunity to learn from the tools, techniques and best practices of
the Indian legislative and democratic system.

Youth Parliament Pakistan

Political participation and capacity building of young females
including their male counterparts has also been the aim of PILDAT’s Youth Parliament
Pakistan. Launched in 2007, the Youth Parliament has successfully concluded
8 terms so far. (in 2007, 2008-2009, 2010, 2012, 2013, 2014 – 2015 and 2016).
The Youth Parliament Pakistan has its own 2- party system, Leader of the House
and Opposition, as well as an augmented system of Parliamentary Committees with
Committee Chairpersons. The establishment and facilitation of the YPP is part
of PILDAT’s focus on the country’s youth demographic and it’s awareness, education
and training in the norms of politics and democracy. In 8 batches of YPP, young
females were elected as Deputy Speakers, Leader of the Opposition, Ministers
and Committee Chairs. One of the esteemed female member of the first-ever Youth
Parliament Pakistan in 2007 has been elected as a Senator in 2018. The Youth
Parliament has continued to serve as a great platform through which a representative
section of the Youth of Pakistan have practiced and experienced life under a
political and Parliamentary spotlight. The young members of Youth Parliament
Pakistan chose political association, elected their Youth Prime Minister and
Leader of the Opposition, a Youth Cabinet and a Shadow Cabinet, debated public
policy issues, worked in Parliamentary Committees and gave their detailed input
to some of they key policies of the Government of Pakistan such as the Draft
Youth Policy, proposed legislation on Provincial Autonomy and a host of other
issues. The young members, drawn from across a cross-section of socio-political
and economic spectrum of Pakistan, learnt and practiced how to prepare and move
legislation, how to enlist support of their fellow members on their bills and
resolutions in the House and how to reach consensus and compromise through the
use of conversation, dialogue and understanding of the others’ concerns, views
and perspectives.

Women and Future Political Leadership

The PILDAT focus on strengthening political leadership of
women extends to strengthening and sustaining female leadership capabilities.
A PILDAT Study on Mapping Future Political Leadership of Pakistan, prepared
in 2016 by compiling and analysing political and social profiles of 20 political
personalities of Pakistan included 6 female political leaders.

Parliamentary Performance of Female MPs

Alongside capability enhancement of female MPs, PILDAT has
also focussed on analysing performance of individual legislators in Parliament.
Each PILDAT analysis and study highlights and celebrates women MPs for their
outstanding performance.

Elections and Women

Elections are a fundamental pre-requisite for democracy. They
play a significant role in nation building as everybody has one equally counted
vote regardless of gender. For an effective functioning democracy, however,
the role of citizens is not just limited to voting; they need to engage fully
in the electoral processes through their conversion from potential voters to
active democratic participants. As a developing democracy, Pakistan has quite
a voyage ahead of it in terms of effective participation of all its citizens
in the electoral processes. While problems exist in providing level playing
field to all citizens to participate effectively in electoral processes, these
become acute in the case of marginalized groups such as women. PILDAT has continued
to focus on the issues of effective participation of Women in the electoral
processes in the country in terms of discussing and advocating against various
political, cultural, societal and systematic barriers. Many papers and studies
and opinion pieces by PILDAT such as
Where are the women voters? are continually prepared by PILDAT for policy
advocacy on the issue.

Women and Right to Information

PILDAT has continued to promote the legislation and effective
utilization of effective Right to Information (RTI) laws in Pakistan since 2002.
Apart from being an internationally protected human right and recognized as
a fundamental right in Pakistan’s Constitution, an effective RTI law is vital
for ensuring transparency and accountability in democratic governance. PILDAT
firmly believes that if information is a cornerstone of accountability, participation
and citizen voice, then women are in great need of it, not only as a theoretical
right, but also as one that can be practically exercised and that leads to real
transformation. With access to information, women would be afforded a new instrument
to contribute to overcoming the gender disparities and traditional constraints
that have historically kept them disempowered and disenfranchised.
PILDAT is therefore executing a project specifically focussed on Enhancing Empowerment
of Women and Minorities of South Punjab through more effective use of RTI Law.