Gender Quotas Database

Pakistan is a federation with local, provincial and national tiers of government. Constitutions from 1956 until 1985 all provided for some reserved seats for women at the national and sub-national levels. In the 1956 Constitution, a minimum of 3 per cent of seats were reserved for women at all levels of government, including national and provincial assemblies, the Senate and local councils. The constitutions which followed, in 1962 and 1973, reserved seats for women—2.75 per cent in the National Assembly and 5 per cent in each of the provincial assemblies—and were implemented through indirect elections. In 1985, reserved seats for women in the National Assembly were increased to 10 per cent for a ten-year period or three general elections, whichever came first (Rai 2005: 175). This provision expired in 1988, and for elections held in the 1990s the number of women in parliament did not increase beyond 4 per cent (Reyes 2003: 42).

The national consultations in the Ministry of Women and Development, the National Campaign for Restoration of Women’s Reserved Seats, the Report of the Commission of Inquiry for Women, and the National Plan for Action all argued for new reservations during the late 1990s and early 2000s, thus providing for the 30 per cent quota of reserved seats. At the time, 11 political parties endorsed this initiative.

The current system of reservation of seats for the parliament and provincial assemblies came into force in 2002. The Devolution of Power Plan (DPP) in 2000, introduced under the military government of General Pervez Musharraf, established a uniform system of local government bodies in all four provinces of the country. The DPP, with the adoption of the Local Government Ordinance Act of 2001, guaranteed a 33 per cent quota for women at all three levels of local councils: the district (zila), sub-district (tehsil) and union councils at the village level. Under this system, according to one account, 42,049 women came into local government (Rai 2005: 175).

This system of local government was operational until 2009, and since the election of the new civilian government in 2008, the next phase of decentralization and local government development is under consideration. Local government elections which were initially planned to take place in 2009 have been postponed. In anticipation of the next local government elections at the end of 2013, the provinces of Sindh and Punjab have adopted new Local Government Acts in 2013, showing a decrease in the number of reserved seats, as compared to the 2001 Act.