Women in Pakistan's Upper Dir Vote After Four Decades In Local Government Elections

Women in Upper Dir, Pakistan, used their voting rights after four decades in local government by-elections held in the district on Thursday, reported Dawn. The women had last voted in elections in 1977. Women voters hailed the election commission for the historic moment.

The election panel had arranged separate polling stations for these women in various areas in Gawaldi, Darora, Chukiatan and Dir Khan. Some, however, reported that women couldn't cast their votes in areas where polling stations were not installed.

Social activists and the opposition, including the Pakistan People’s Party, has been pushing for women to be voters. They also had been condemning the election commission's decision for not ensuring enfranchisement of women in Upper Dir until now.

The Express Tribune reported that till last year, “all religious and liberal political party leadership in Union Council Darora reached a verbal agreement to bar women from casting their votes.”

In Mingora, Upper Dir, some women were able to vote in 2015 after four decades, reported Dawn.

The Guardian reported that most women in Pakistan were not allowed to vote against their husband’s and families wishes. Women’s rights activists, including Malala Yousufzai -- a girls education rights activist who recently returned to the country -- have been pushing for new system since many years.

In 2008, many polling stations were torched and women were told it was “vulgar” for them to cast votes in the 2008 elections, The Guardian reported.

"Even those few women who are inside the political system are ordered about by their family. They are wives or daughters of men who want them to do their bidding, they are there just to make up quota numbers and have to do what they are told. It would be better to have quality not quantity,” Saba Ismail, 23-year-old founder and director of Aware Girls, a peace group, told The Guardian.

Pakistani women were allowed to vote since 1947 and their right to vote was reaffirmed in 1956, under the Constitution.