Academic Writing:
"Women in Electoral Politics: An Account of Exclusion." Forthcoming. In Pakistan's Political Parties: Against All Odds, edited by Niloufer Siddiqui, Mariam Mufti and Sahar Shafqat. Georgetown University Press.
"Canvassing the Gatekeepers: A Field Experiment to Improve Women's Turnout in Pakistan's General Election". Working Paper. (With Ali Cheema, Asad Liaqat & Shandana Khan Mohmand)
“Personal is Political: Prospects for Women's Substantive Representation in Pakistan” Working Paper.
“The Empty Promise of Urbanization: Women's Political Participation in Pakistan” Working Paper. (With Ali Cheema, Asad Liaqat, Shandana Khan Mohmand and Shanze Fatima Rauf)
“What Women Want: Gender Gaps in Political Preferences" in Golder, Matt and Sona Golder (eds.) 2017. “Symposium: Women/Gender and Comparative Politics.”CP: Newsletter of the Comparative Politics Organized Section of the American Political Science Association 27(1): 42-49
"(When) Can Governments Change Norms around Violence Against Women" Working Paper. (With Macartan Humphreys & Summer Lindsey)
Pathways to Women’s Substantive Representation in Pakistan (with Ali Cheema, Asad Liaqat and Shandana Mohmand)
Part of EGAP Metaketa V: Women's Action Committees and Local Services
Exercising Her Right: Civic and Political Pathways to Women's Political Participation in Pakistan, Phase II (with Ali Cheema, Asad Liaqat and Shandana Mohmand)
Part of the Action for Empowerment and Accountability (A4EA) Research Programme
Countering Gender-Based Violence in Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (with Jocelyn Kelly and Maarten Voors)
In partnership with USAID
From Unequal to Inequitable: American Women’s Views on Gender Inequality (with Albert Fang & Annabelle Hutchinson)
"Women in Electoral Politics: An Account of Exclusion." Forthcoming. In Pakistan's Political Parties: Against All Odds, edited by Niloufer Siddiqui, Mariam Mufti and Sahar Shafqat. Georgetown University Press.
"Canvassing the Gatekeepers: A Field Experiment to Improve Women's Turnout in Pakistan's General Election". Working Paper. (With Ali Cheema, Asad Liaqat & Shandana Khan Mohmand)
- Women participate in politics at lower rates than men in many developing countries. Do constraints on women's participation lie with women themselves, or with the men in their households who act as gatekeepers? We conduct a field experiment in Lahore, Pakistan to test how canvassing aimed at increasing women's turnout should be targeted within the household. We randomly assign 2500 households to one of four conditions: no canvassing visit, a visit targeted at men, a visit targeted at women, or both. All visits are primarily aimed at increasing women's turnout. We find large increases in women's turnout when the visit targets only men or both men and women. Targeting women alone is insufficient to improve their turnout. Using a costly behavioral measure of support for women's role in democracy, we find that treating men increases their support for women's role in democracy two months after the election. Households where both men and women were treated saw greater political discussion among men and women, and men in these household were more likely to provide women logistical support to vote. The results suggest that engaging men is necessary to reduce gender gaps in political participation in a context where women do not enjoy full decision-making power over their own participation
“Personal is Political: Prospects for Women's Substantive Representation in Pakistan” Working Paper.
- I develop and test a theory of how gender inequality within the household is reproduced in the political sphere, and undermines prospects for women's substantive representation. Drawing on an original face-to-face survey conducted in 800 households in the Faisalabad district of Pakistan, I show that men and women within the same household prioritize systematically different public goods and services based on the context-specific division of household labor. Using a novel behavioral measure of preference expression, I demonstrate that women attach a lower value to their distinctive preferences than men, and are less willing to communicate these preferences to political representatives. The gendered asymmetry in preference assertion has implications for democratic theories of representation: it suggests that the link between political participation and substantive representation may be undermined by gender inequality within the household.
“The Empty Promise of Urbanization: Women's Political Participation in Pakistan” Working Paper. (With Ali Cheema, Asad Liaqat, Shandana Khan Mohmand and Shanze Fatima Rauf)
- Do big cities enable or hinder women’s electoral participation? What are the determinants of women’s participation in big cities and are they different from those in rural areas? The paper uses quantitative analysis to answer these questions in the context of Pakistan, a country that has seen rapid urbanization and today hosts 14 big (or a half a million plus) cities. Contrary to expectations, we find that women’s electoral participation is 8 percentage points lower in big cities compared to rural areas, and this is mirrored by a higher gender-gap in participation in these contexts. Results show that women’s labor force participation and primary education attainment are important determinants of women’s electoral participation, which lends support to resource-based explanations. In terms of household factors, dependency ratio is negatively correlated with women’s electoral participation in rural areas, but it is positively correlated with turnout in big cities. Finally, we find that ethno-linguistic fractionalization is important contextual determinant that has a strong negative association with women’s participation in big cities. However, a large and significant negative correlation remains between women’s electoral turnout and the big city variable even after controlling the effect of individual, household and contextual correlates of interest. This is the partial effect of the big city context that is not accounted for by the covariates used in our analysis, and further work is needed to understand the mechanism driving lower participation by women in urban Pakistan.
“What Women Want: Gender Gaps in Political Preferences" in Golder, Matt and Sona Golder (eds.) 2017. “Symposium: Women/Gender and Comparative Politics.”CP: Newsletter of the Comparative Politics Organized Section of the American Political Science Association 27(1): 42-49
"(When) Can Governments Change Norms around Violence Against Women" Working Paper. (With Macartan Humphreys & Summer Lindsey)
- We study the conditions under which norm-based interventions can be effective in reducing levels of violence against women. Advocates of norms-based interventions have drawn on models in which space for norm change arises from a gap between private values and beliefs about the values of others. In such settings, interventions that re-calibrate people's beliefs about the values of others opens up the possibility of society-wide changes in behavior. Assessing whether these conditions are met is difficult, however. We introduce a new set of measures to assess the differences between privately held attitudes, and beliefs about the attitudes of others. Drawing on survey data collected from 7000 respondents in 250 slums in India, we find relatively high levels of tolerance for violence, but mixed support for the view that social beliefs are out of sync with privately held attitudes. From an impact evaluation of a randomized government intervention that builds on this model to produce change, we find little evidence of effects across a range of attitudinal and behavioral outcomes. We find some limited evidence for greater program effects in areas where individual beliefs about others’ values are out of sync with privately held values.
Pathways to Women’s Substantive Representation in Pakistan (with Ali Cheema, Asad Liaqat and Shandana Mohmand)
Part of EGAP Metaketa V: Women's Action Committees and Local Services
Exercising Her Right: Civic and Political Pathways to Women's Political Participation in Pakistan, Phase II (with Ali Cheema, Asad Liaqat and Shandana Mohmand)
Part of the Action for Empowerment and Accountability (A4EA) Research Programme
Countering Gender-Based Violence in Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (with Jocelyn Kelly and Maarten Voors)
In partnership with USAID
From Unequal to Inequitable: American Women’s Views on Gender Inequality (with Albert Fang & Annabelle Hutchinson)