August 1, 2026
By Iqra Manzoor
LAHORE
Women in Lower Dir remain far less likely than men to be registered voters, according to the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) a gap that the Commission is now trying to close with a fresh registration drive across the district.
From August 4 to August 27, ECP teams are to fan out to seven locations — among them Satandar in Balambat, Katiari in Adenzai, Mayar Jandol in Samar Bagh, and Government Degree College Lal Qila — urging women to obtain Computerised National Identity Cards, register as voters, and take part in elections.
The push follows a meeting of district officials, education department staff and civil society representatives, chaired by District Election Commissioner Jamshed Khan, where participants flagged just how persistently low women’s voter registration has stayed in Lower Dir despite years of similar interventions.
Civil society groups and the ECP have run campaigns here before, yet the gap has proven stubborn — a pattern activists say has less to do with logistics than with decades of social and political resistance to women’s participation.
A history of exclusion
Prominent social worker and activist from Lower Dir, Shad Begum, says the issue cannot be understood without looking at the district’s political history.
“Lower Dir became part of Pakistan in 1969,” she said, a time when women’s literacy stood at just 1%, compared with 5% for men — a gap that set the tone for decades of restricted political access.
“Even after the local government system gave women limited entry to voting rights,” she said, “Both secular and religious parties struck informal agreements during elections and issued public statements warning women not to vote, and women who did contest elections faced serious backlash. So this has been the history which matters today,” she told Voicepk.
That history, Begum said, still shapes who gets documented and who doesn’t.
“The social norms in Lower Dir also put women under pressure because they don’t consider women equal citizens, so when women are denied their basic rights, there will naturally be a lack of documentation such as CNICs and voter registration.”
She lists the barriers as compounding: restrictive social norms, an anti-women mindset, a shortage of facilities and resources, the absence of women staff, and limits on women’s mobility.
Ultimately, she said, the decision rests with men.
“Women from these areas are mostly dependent on men and it is men who decide whether the documentation of the women in their household is important or whether giving them the right to vote is important. So it’s totally dependent on men to decide for the women of Dir. And men, of course, do not consider these things important.”
Parties show little interest
Political parties have also compounded the problem by simply not prioritising women as voters, she says.
“We also see that political parties prefer male voters, while female voters have never been an interest for them. Whether we talk about voter registration, political awareness or political engagement, there is much less interest in female voters.”
However that disinterest is seasonal, she adds.
“Political parties hold meetings when there are elections, but when it comes to voter registration and female participation in elections, political parties don’t invest the same energy in the process as they do for male voters.”
Women’s political leadership in the region has also been structurally limited, Begum said.
Historically, women entered politics only through reserved seats — though after a recent 5% quota on general seats, a woman from Upper Dir ran a public campaign and mobilised women in the region, a sign of what’s possible.
“So this political activism is lacking because very few women are actively participating in politics and men continue to dominate. Even when political parties reach out to women, they do so through men.”
The registration process itself is hampered by the same gender imbalance, she said: mobile CNIC-registration vans are typically staffed entirely by men, and “no man is interested in allowing male staff to enter his home and register the women of his household.”
Despite that, she said, civil society organisations — including her own — continue working on women’s rights in the region.
Fighting from the ground up
Shad Begum recalls contesting local government elections herself specifically to encourage other women into politics.
She welcomes the 2001 Local Government Ordinance, which gave women 33% representation and voting rights, but says parties in the region publicly threatened women against voting or contesting even then — prompting her to run as an independent candidate to push back against that pressure.
She also points to a more recent safeguard: an ECP Code of Conduct provision requiring re-polling in any area where women’s turnout falls below 10%.
“This is a good step,” she says. “Dir is a unique district. On one hand, women are given no importance and are not engaged at all, but on the other hand, because of the efforts of organisations, civil society, social media and local government structures, there has been some change.”
She cites a specific case as proof of both the problem and women’s resistance to it: during local government elections, and separately during a contest between Jamaat-e-Islami and ANP, candidates allegedly agreed that no women should be allowed to vote — despite roughly 53,000 registered female voters in the area.
Begum, a petitioner in the resulting legal challenge, says the case was won before the ECP but could not be sustained in local court for lack of evidence.
“Women of Dir challenge the election results and they are resilient,” she said, calling for political and religious parties to give women real roles on the ground rather than “anti-women narratives,” and for the ECP and NADRA to meet women where they already gather. “Change will come soon,” she said.
The ECP’s response
ECP spokesperson Sohail Ahmad tells Voicepk that the campaign is running across 14 districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa — including Peshawar, Nowshera, Charsadda, Khyber, Kohat, Hangu, Mardan, Swabi, Battagram, Mansehra, Upper Dir, Swat and Shangla, alongside Lower Dir — and forms part of a joint effort with the National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA) spanning 103 districts nationwide.
ECP surveys have repeatedly identified the absence of CNICs as one of the central reasons women are excluded from the electoral process, he says, “One of the most obvious reasons is that many women do not have CNICs, which directly affects their right to vote and their participation in the electoral process.”
To reach remote areas without nearby NADRA offices, the authority has deployed Mobile Registration Vans (MRVs).
This is the fifth such campaign since the ECP-NADRA collaboration began in August last year, Ahmad says, and the results are measurable: “As a result of these campaigns, the gender gap has been reduced to 7% from around 13 to 14%.”
A legal perspective
Legal experts, however, say the campaign addresses only part of the problem. Mehwish Mohib Kakakhel, a lawyer from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, said low registration among women in Lower Dir isn’t a question of legal rights but of the social, administrative and economic barriers that stand between women and the documents they need.
“Many women still do not possess CNICs, which is the first requirement for voter registration. In remote areas, limited access to NADRA registration facilities, documentation issues and insufficient family support often prevent women from obtaining CNICs and becoming registered voters.”
The stakes go beyond the ballot box, she says. Voter registration is the entry point to broader representation.
“When fewer women are registered and participate in elections, their voices and priorities receive less attention in political decision-making. Increasing women’s voter registration is therefore the first and most important step towards ensuring their meaningful political participation and representation.”
The numbers
Progress in Lower Dir has been slow but measurable. Historically, women in the district faced significant barriers to electoral participation, and political parties were accused of reaching informal agreements to keep them from voting.
That began to shift after the ECP introduced a rule requiring at least 10% women’s turnout in a constituency for election results to remain valid — and in the 2018 general election, women in Lower Dir cast votes for the first time in the district’s electoral history, according to the ECP.
Six years later, that participation had grown substantially: according to ECP figures reported after the February 8, 2024 general elections, 123,039 women cast their votes in Lower Dir, marking a significant departure from previous elections in which women were widely disenfranchised.
Despite that progress, the gender gap in voter registration persists. According to a June 2026 report by the Free and Fair Election Network (FAFEN), Lower Dir has 939,953 registered voters, representing 54% of its estimated 2025 population of 1.73 million — matching the national voter registration rate. Of these, 516,924 are men (55%) and 423,029 are women (45%): around 61% of the district’s estimated male population is registered to vote, compared with 48% of women, leaving a 10 percentage-point gender gap in voter registration.
The report concludes that while Lower Dir’s overall voter registration rate aligns with the national average, targeted efforts to increase women’s registration remain essential before the next general elections.