How Digitally Transforming Our Government Can Support Women’s Participation

By Mashal Nadeem

If there is one experience universal to the average Pakistani citizen, it is the absolute dread of interacting with the bureaucracy and state. Whether it is to renew one’s passport or file an FIR, unless one has contacts or large amounts of money to subtly speed up the process, it is an hours if not days long ordeal to visit a government office and get something done.

But for women, this dread is two-fold. Not only is the process physically exhausting but emotionally draining, as they are exposed to male-dominated public spaces that make them feel unsafe and unwanted. In 2019, Trust for Democratic Education and Accountability (TDEA) reported that around 2.6 million women in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa did not have identity documents – which means of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s 17.4 million female population, almost 15% of women do not have a say in their federal government’s policies and policymaking institutions. In a deeply conservative society like KPK, the reasons behind this can be speculated, but it isn’t hard to guess that having to interact with the public space is a contributing factor.

Furthermore, of the 112,307,995+ women in Pakistan, UNFPA states that 32% of them have reported experiencing physical violence in their lives – but this isn’t an accurate number. One in two women do not report their experiences at all, and it’s not surprising they don’t. The process of reporting and following up on cases takes a toll on our women, who live in a society that believes that a good, respectable woman belongs within chaar-dewaari. To go out and interact with government institutions is to leave the chaar-dewaari, and leave one’s izzat behind when they do. Because of this, for many women who can lose family support when leaving the house, the case is lost before it has even begun.

It’s clear that interacting with government structures is a struggle for women. So how does one fix this problem? The conservatism in Pakistani culture is not likely to shift in the near future, and one cannot wait for decades for cultural change. One possible solution for this has arisen in the recent decade: by digitalizing government procedures, women no longer have to navigate the public space to access justice or influence policies that can help them.

The benefits of computerization when it comes to government support are huge. Online government implementation services make it easier for women to access help they need. Introducing an online FIR system has allowed processes to be streamlined and less time-consuming, as well as more supportive to female crime victims, who no longer have to go through the additional trauma of filing reports in a police station full of men, but can stay in a safe space.

Similarly, the digitalization and computerization of NADRA has made it so women no longer have to go and wait long hours to make or renew their identity documents – a huge deterrent for women and their families. Having an identity card provides a host of benefits to women that they would otherwise be entirely deprived of. From registering a sim to opening a bank account, one needs a national identity card. For women specifically, the introduction of the Benazir Income Support Program (BISP) in 2008 highlighted the benefits of being registered with the government: BISP provides the female head of household with financial support, only through registering with a CNIC. According to the BISP Impact Evaluation Surveys conducted by Oxford Policy Management in 2011 and 2013, the women who had CNICs felt a stronger sense of identity and felt more respected and safer to voice their opinions.

Is the solution this simple? Of course not. The digital divide in Pakistan is huge, and as with most things, disproportionately impacts women as well. Yet with smart phones and digital access on the rise, this opportunity should be taken to move beyond simple digitalization to actual digital transformation. This change is what can create a system that actually supports women.

Mashal Nadeem is a research and psychology enthusiast, looking to learn more about other fields to increase her skills and contribute to the development sector. Her interests include public and psychological health, social protection, gender discrimination and intersectionality. She currently works at an NGO, Tameer e Khalaq Foundation, in Islamabad.