Reviewing Gender Quotas in Pakistan and Afghanistan

Pakistan was among the first countries world-wide to introduce gender quotas in parliament and since then followed the path of indirect reserved seats, ensuring women’s descriptive political representation ever since the 1950s. In contrast, quota provisions in Afghanistan are a legacy of the post-2001 intervention, opting for directly contested reserved seats at the national level.

In this round table, Farzana Bari and Andrea Fleschenberg (Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad) will present the main results of a comparative study on gender quotas in the parliaments of Pakistan and Afghanistan as well as reflect upon and discuss their findings with leading women parliamentarians, women’s activists from both countries and you.

This roundtable takes place in connection with the visit of a delegation of female parliamentarians and women’s activists from Pakistan and Afghanistan to Berlin and Brussels. Please find the list of the members of the delegation below.

We would like to invite you to this round table and hope for your active participation.  

Delegates:

Afghanistan

• Shah Gul Rezai (MP)
• Shinkai Karokhail (MP)
• Sabrina Saqeb (former MP, civil society activist)
• Abdullah Athayi (responsible program coordinator Heinrich Böll Stiftung Afghanistan)

Pakistan

• Shaista Pervaiz (MP, PML-N, elected on reserved seat for women, chairperson of Women Parliamentarian Caucus)
• Dr. Farzana Bari (lead researcher country study Pakistan, Director of the Centre of Excellence in Gender Studies at QAU and civil society expert)
• PD Dr. Andrea Fleschenberg dos Ramos Pinéu (lead researcher country study Afghanistan, DAAD Long Term Guest Professor at QAU, Visiting Faculty University of Peshawar)

When: Tuesday, 17th November 2015 at 17.00

Where: Passage Room, Residence Palace, Rue de la Loi 155, 1000 Brussels

RSVP: Here