Empowering the Marginalized through Gender Quotas: Women’s Substantive Representation in the Parliament of Pakistan (Working title)

Gender equality in politics is crucial to empowering women because it makes them part of decision-making institutions. The United Nations (UN) implemented the notion of "gender mainstreaming" in the early 1990s. As a result, women have been steadily gaining more visibility in formal political institutions. The persistence of gender discrimination inside political institutions is evident. Feminist movements have advocated for the implementation of policies that prioritize the well-being and rights of women. To address these inequalities in representation, gender quotas have emerged as a robust and widely adopted policy approach for increasing women's presence in legislative bodies across the globe. In 2002, General Musharraf reinstated the reserved seats in Pakistan. The study has examined the impact of gender quotas on the descriptive representation of women and the correlation between this kind of representation and the substantive representation of women. The study's theoretical framework has its foundation in critical mass theory. The primary aim of this study is to investigate the correlation between the increasing number of female legislators in parliament of Pakistan and their influence on the representation of 'women's interests' in parliamentary processes and outcomes. This will be achieved through an in-depth examination of the parliament and other institutional structures, as well as the individual attributes of female Members of Parliament (MPs) that shape their legislative behavior. This research study aims to test the critical mass theory for a Global South study, which is a must in terms of both empirical studies and theories. It will do this by using a qualitative analysis of semi-structured interviews with female legislators and an in-depth analysis of the proceedings of three legislative periods: the 12th (2002–07), the 13th (2008–13), and the 14th (2013–18), since reserved seat provisions were brought back in 2001/2.