Canvassing the Gatekeepers: A Field Experiment to Increase Women Voters’ Turnout in Pakistan

Abstract

How can we close persistent gender gaps in political participation? We develop a theory highlighting the role of male household members as “gatekeepers” of women’s participation in patriarchal settings and argue that the answer involves targeting these men. We conduct a field experiment in Pakistan and find that targeting women with a nonpartisan get-out-the-vote campaign has no effect on their turnout in a national election. However, women’s turnout increases substantially when male household members are canvassed to support women’s participation. Households where both men and women are canvassed see the largest increases in women’s turnout and additional increases in political discussion and men’s practical support to help women vote. Using a costly behavioral measure, we also demonstrate lasting effects on men’s supportive behavior in these households two months after the election. Our results address the importance, and tangible benefits, of engaging men to ease constraints that hinder equal participation.

Field Experiments on Gender: Where the Personal and Political Collide

“…The very act of dialogue about gender equality among police officers proved to be transformative, creating buy-in for the study results. Similarly, during a debriefing session in Cheema et al’s (2021) study on women voter turnout in Pakistan, women canvassers noted their experience of traveling to parts of the city that they had never been to as part of implementing the canvassing treatment. Thus, working in the study expanded, if only briefly, their sphere of mobility in an urban public space that is costly for women to traverse.…”

“…We find that gender politics often leads us to pursue research questions aligned with our own experiences and beliefs. For example, while designing an intervention to increase women’s political participation in Pakistan, Cheema et al (2021) chose to focus on interventions that could address “everyday forms of male gatekeeping” in the urban center where they live rather than the extreme conservative “bans” on women’s voting in rural and tribal areas that have received much media and legislative attention. The decision to focus on these more quotidian constraints came at least in part from a lived familiarity with personally navigating them and knowing the real costs that they impose on women’s presence in public life.…”

“…To work with partners who are women or who have women leaders is a political decision that requires certain material investments but that also can reap critical rewards. Cheema et al (2021) chose to work closely with organizations that resulted from the 1980s women’s movement and that are extremely active in mobilizing communities on women’s rights issues in Pakistan. Similar investments may be necessary to return research to those communities that participate in it if they include women.…”

“… 2. For example, see Cheema et al (2021) on women’s participation in Pakistan; Pierotti, Lake, and Lewis (2018) on gender relations in Democratic Republic of Congo; Chattopadyhay and Duflo (2004) on public goods allocation in India; Bandiera et al (2020) on social and economic outcomes for adolescent girls in Sierra Leone; Beath, Christia, and Enikolopov (2013) on attitudes toward women’s roles in Afghanistan; Karim et al (2018) on gender sensitivity in policing; and Donald et al (2020) on marriage and intra-household bargaining in Côte d’Ivoire. …”

The Empty Promise of Urbanisation: Women’s Political Participation in Pakistan

“…Evidence from Sargodha shows that the votes of three-quarters of these voters are organised by male members of their families and another one-fifth are organised by male leaders of kinship groups. However, evidence from the metropolitan city of Lahore in Punjab shows that a majority (54 per cent) of women voters do not report participating in voting blocks (Cheema et al 2019a(Cheema et al , 2019b. This is further indicative evidence of weakening clientelist linkages between political parties and women voters in big cities.…”