Pessimistic Beliefs of Norms: Descriptive Findings on Women’s Political Participation in Pakistan

Authors: Saad Gulzar, Luke Sonnet, and Muhammad Yasir Khan

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Abstract

Why does women’s political participation continue to lag behind men’s in much of the world? Using primary census and network data from 37 communities in Pakistan, this letter documents that perceptions of norms around whether women should participate in politics are pessimistic: individuals underestimate actual support men and women hold for women’s political participation. Further, despite previous evidence that the household primarily structures women’s behavior in patriarchal societies, we show that women’s social networks have little overlap with those of men in their own households and, more importantly, that women’s pessimistic expectations about others’ beliefs are more strongly correlated with beliefs of socially proximate women than with men in their households. We conclude that efforts to reduce the gender gap in political participation may therefore benefit from targeting pessimistic expectations of norms, focusing particularly on women’s social neighbors.