12 million weak

The voter gap between male and female voters continues to grow as per a news release elucidating that this figure currently stands at 12 million. This presents an obvious disadvantage to all women in the country. Although NADRA has improved in the last few years in terms of accessibility and reliability in processing times, its improvement is a crucial area for focus owing to more stringent crackdowns on illegal residents and extremism. Some NADRA processes are still lethargic and require examination, especially with regard to this finding. The implications of such a severe disparity between male and female voters are many.

Most glaring is the fact that with low female voter representation, women are less able to advocate for themselves. Candidates who support women’s rights would get drowned out by counterparts who are supported by patriarchs and this presents a grave danger considering women’s rights are already in a precarious condition in Pakistan and that chauvinist mentalities run amok, woven into the social fabric of society. Direct impacts aside, a skewed ratio is bad news for any democracy, regardless of whether it is female or male voters disadvantaged.

NADRA has improvements to make, particularly in registering more women into its database. Moving forward, an awareness campaign needs to be initiated. It would be particularly useful to design the campaign targeting patriarchs since they tend to make single-handed decisions in households across various socio-economic strata. In tandem, the system must enable more women to obtain identification cards, which would facilitate enforcement of the same. Finally, we cannot be ignorant about the costs associated with obtaining an identity card, be it transport to and from a NADRA office, or the Rs400 fee for a smart CNIC. There should be consideration to subsidise costs for citizens who can show proof of financial hardship. Although this facilitation process should have begun four years ago, following the last general election, there is an opportunity to learn here.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 30^th, 2017.

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