Uncast Ballots

PAKISTAN: TURNING AROUND LOW TURNOUT

Despite gaining full suffrage in 1947, women in Pakistan have some of the lowest voter turnout in the world. In the 2018 general election, 11 million more men voted than women. 

Some of the gap was surely due to what happened during the previous election, in 2013: reports surfaced of mosques blaring warnings to women attempting to vote, telling them to stay away from the ballot box or face punishment. Many of the women who ignored those warnings turned up at polling stations to find male civilians wielding batons to keep them from entering. In some cases, this terror was effective: 26 polling stations in one area of Karachi, the capital, reported 0 percent turnout from women. 

These issues are even more prevalent in rural areas, where conservative Islamic values carry an even greater weight. But those ideas still permeate every part of the country. “In Pakistan, women often see themselves the way that men see them, like property,” says voting activist Dur e Shawar.  Her organization, All Pakistan Women’s Association (APWA), works to educate local women about their political rights and encourage them to actually go to the polls.  

One of APWA’s main initiatives is helping women obtain voter ID. In order to vote in Pakistan, a person must register for a National Identity Card, an application process that requires being able to read and write. With a female literacy rate of 45%, ID remains out of reach for many women, leaving them out of the formal economy and heavily dependent on male relatives—opening a bank account or getting a driver’s license requires the same ID. 

But these difficulties have not stopped efforts to increase female voter turnout. After the dismal turnout of the 2013 elections, the government and civil society organizations worked together in a massive effort that resulted in 3.8 million women joining the voter rolls ahead of the 2018 elections. 

“We know we can change this,” says e Shawar, “and our work with these women shows them the power they really have.”

AFGHANISTAN: DEMOCRACY TAKES TIME

A century of regime changes, often with Western interference, has flipped Afghanistan repeatedly between progressive and conservative agendas. With each one, women won or lost the right to vote, meaning older generations of women there have been enfranchised and disenfranchised more than once. During conservative decades, most women couldn’t leave home without government permission, and religious and gender norms created conditions discouraging women from fully engaging in the public sphere.

Sapida Barmaki is one of many women defying this reality. On a spring day in 2014, she walked an hour across Mazar-i-Sharif, her hometown in northern Afghanistan, to get a voter ID that would allow her to vote for the first time. Women, mostly housewives, packed the rooms, waiting for the formal validation of a small plastic card. “It made me excited and proud,” Barmaki remembers thinking as she looked across the room. “I waited in line all day, but I didn’t care, because it was worth it.” When she cast her vote a week later, she did it along with seven million others, 30 percent of them women.

But her thoughts extended to the country’s many mountainous and rural regions, where the landscape creates opportunities for Taliban fighters to ambush would-be voters. “People having to walk all day to get to the polls or obtain ID [leaves] them incredibly vulnerable,” says Barmaki. Her fears about voter safety were not unfounded: in that 2014 election, insurgents created checkpoints in rural areas where they threatened and assaulted returning voters with physical violence. Amongst ongoing threats to the 2019 election, the total number of voters dropped to two million, representing just 6% of a population of 32 million. 

Despite this violence and repression, Afghan women are still guaranteed representation in office: in addition to enshrining the right to vote, the 2004 constitution mandates that 27 percent of the country’s parliament be women, and currently, women hold 28 percent of parliamentary seats (in the U.S., it’s 24 percent). 

Fawzia Koofi is Afghanistan’s first female member of parliament and Afghanistan’s first female deputy speaker of the lower house in Parliament. She also founded her own political party in 2019 called Movement for Change. With 60 percent of its members women, the party was partly founded because she saw the need for women to raise their voices and protect their rights. 

Women make a difference politically on a local level as well. Zarifa Ghafari became one of Afghanistan’s first female mayors at the age of 26 and is well aware of her role in the fight for women’s rights–especially after the U.S. announced peace talks with the Taliban, threatening progress on gender equality.  “My job is to make people believe in women’s rights and women’s power,” she said on  Twitter. 

Additional cultural changes signal that women are more boldly living public lives. The Afghan ambassador to the UN and the Afghan ambassador to the United States are both women, and public venues like movie theaters are being adapted to be female-friendly. 

Progress like this heartens Sapida, who now works for Sahar, a nonprofit that educates girls in rural areas about their rights. “Democracy takes time,” she says. “My vote may not be counted today, but it will be tomorrow.”

HONDURAS: VOTING AMIDST VIOLENCE

Considered at times the “murder capital of the world,” Honduras has endured a homicide rate among the highest globally for years due to gang violence. Voting is often a target: in the most recent presidential election, police and military squared off against members of the Barrio 18 gang, who aggressively threatened campaigners for President Juan Orlando Hernandez. 

While electoral gang violence doesn’t always target women specifically, it often determines whether they will vote. “The violence means putting the whole family at risk, and men are more willing to risk their careers and livelihoods to vote,” says Lizzy Flores Flake, Honduran Ambassador to the UN and a former congressional candidate. Flores adds that even though Honduran women have had suffrage since 1955, the country’s machismo culture suppresses participation. “Women are raised to believe their value is that they belong to a man—they belong in the home primarily as caregivers. They aren’t taught to think for themselves.” 

But many women in Honduras are campaigning to change these beliefs. Merly Eguigure is a coordinator with Movimiento de Mujeres por la Paz Visitación Padilla, which works to challenge women’s self-perception of their worth. “We break the idea they have to abide by the traditional roles that society has assigned them,” she says. (The group is named after Visitación Padilla, a Honduran feminist activist who campaigned for women’s rights beginning in the 1910s).

Domestic violence is a focal point for Eguigure and her colleagues. According to the UN, 27% of women in Honduras say they have suffered physical violence at some point in their lives. Domestic violence cases have increased nearly 400 percent since 2008, with the vast majority left unprosecuted due to women not willing to testify, and a lack of formal tools and systems put in place to address them. “There is no justice for women if they experience violence, sexual abuse, unemployment, little access to education,” Eguigure says. “With violence, any role is limited. There is no democracy without justice for women. We carry that legacy in every action we take.”

To increase political participation, Visitación Padilla conducts workshops with women, especially younger generations and university students, to educate them about their rights and help them understand the power of their vote. “When many women know this power, we will transform the social structures that discriminate and make us invisible throughout history,” Eguigure says. “The women we work with no longer accept their subordination, are deciding on their bodies, and seeing they can think for themselves. That opens the door to political spaces and translates into votes at the ballot box.”

NIGER: FINANCIAL EMPOWERMENT AS POLITICAL EMPOWERMENT

Niger has the highest child marriage rate in the world, and although women have had the right to vote since 1948, turnout has always been low. Education is severely limited, with 86 percent of women illiterate and in the dark about their role in the political process. A conservative Islamic culture limits women’s mobility and ability to make their own decisions. 

There have been, however, major pushes from local female leaders to close the gender equality gap. When Niger prepared for independence in 1958, a female wing of political parties was founded. And one of the most notable benchmarks in recent history was a protest on May 13, 1991, as Niger was transitioning from a military regime to democracy. Thousands of women gathered in the capital to voice their refusal to accept the near-exclusion of women from the transition committee. The only woman on the committee resigned in solidarity, and beginning the next year, May 13 was designated National Women’s Day. 

But change has been slow, and women have not caught up to men’s representation. So far, economic empowerment has made more of a difference. A beacon for women’s autonomy has come in the form of the Village Savings and Loan Association (VSLA), locally known as Mata Masu Dubara, an initiative run for the last 25 years by the humanitarian organization CARE. Each fund is made up of a voluntary group of about 20 women in a village, who contribute to a savings fund and make joint decisions on operations. They can also take out loans to start businesses and make investments.  

Today there are over 25,000 around the country, covering over 13 percent of the national population. “These groups have been able to expand and be replicated because we’ve seen the way that financial empowerment translates to social and political empowerment,” says Aisha Rahamatali, who leads CARE advocacy work in West Africa. “When women have their own income, or investments, they see themselves as more than wives or caretakers—they become leaders with their own voices.” 

Hadjo is a homemaker from the municipality of Hamdallaye, about 20 miles outside Niger’s capital. Participating in her local VLSA gave her the capital to improve her cattle-raising, as well as start a peanut farm whose products she sells at the local market. As her economic stability grew, Hadjo turned to politics and was elected as a municipal councillor. “After discussing with my VSLA women, they gave me their support,” she says. The women of her community voted wholeheartedly for her, helping her succeed in a role that has enabled her to fight for their needs, and for their voices to be heard.

GEORGIA: STRENGTH UNDER PRESSURE

Like many countries still recovering from the collapse of the Soviet Union, gender equality faces an uphill battle in Georgia. And it’s made even steeper by the Eastern Orthodox Chrisitan Church, which preaches unequivocally that women are not equal to men. 

“We aren’t allowed to wear pants in church, which may seem like a minor detail, but it’s quite symbolic,” says Maia Otarashvili, who grew up in a small village two hours from Tblisi, the capital of Georgia. “On one hand, Georgian women I think are quite outspoken, known as strong. But on the other, there’s a social pressure for women to marry young, and stigma against those who might choose to live a more independent lifestyle.” 

A historically troubling practice reflective of women’s lack of autonomy is bridenapping, where women are kidnapped by men who aim to marry them; some mothers are so afraid for their daughters that they don’t let them go outside. Femicide is also still prevalent in Georgia, and a quarter of women report they experience some sort of violence. Education, or lack thereof, has historically hindered progress. 

“The government is afraid of western ideas and approaches,” says Tekla Tevdorashvili, a co-founder of social justice organization GrlzWave. “We are working hard to normalize and shift perceptions to be more progressive, [and] the veil is lifting on some of these stigmas.”

Despite these cultural challenges, women’s political participation is statistically almost equal to men’s. In the 2018 presidential elections, more women turned out to vote than men, electing the country’s first female president. Although the role is largely symbolic—Georgia is a parliamentary democracy—it was still a turning point. 

One factor that contributes to high voter participation among women is that they were granted the right to vote at the same time as men, in 1919. And the Georgian constitution makes no distinction in gender, so civic participation is an ingrained aspect of Georgian society. 

“Voter participation is truly equal, and Georgian voters do not have preferences over gender,” says Baia Pataraia, a prominent Georgian women’s rights activist. “However, politics are seen to be very masculine, [so] women do not get nominated as candidates, and we struggle for the adoption of mandatory gender quotas.” 

These quotas ensure increasing numbers of women in national and municipal legislatures around the country. Women currently hold positions in only 15 percent of parliament, a number that falls to 13 percent at the local level, and in a nation with 64 mayors, only one is a woman. 

“Women are still fighting for their rights and freedoms,” Pataraia adds. “We have a stronger movement of women [recently]—some progress is made, but there is a long way to go.”