1 Vol 6 No. 1 2022 WOMEN’S POLITICAL EMPOWERMENT IN SOUTH ASIA: A STUDY OF PAKISTAN *Dr. Asia Saif Alvi, **Dr. Amaria Atta, ***Ad Hassan Sajanka Abstract Women empowerment is the freedom of women from the vicious grips of various social, political, economic, and cultural discriminations. Empowering women refers to capacity building to manage a more rewarding and enriched life on their own behalf. The current article has focused on political empowerment of women with the specific reference of Pakistan. Political empowerment was taken as independent variable which is measured by women’s representation in national, provincial and local legislative bodies while using the following indicators; Women’s representational ratio in parliament, women’s representational ratio in presidency and premiership, women’s representational ratio in ministership at national as well as at provincial level, and the women’s representational ratio in local governance. In Pakistan, the women representation in the electoral and legislative process has been very marginal since its inception. In recent general elections of 2018, election commission of Pakistan in election Act 2017, made it mandatory to allocate at least 5% tickets to the women candidates of all the political parties as well as 10% women votes in every constituency for the validation of election. This should be appreciated; however, women representation in its true and complete sense is still lacked behind. Key Words: Women Empowerment, Elections, Under-representation, Electoral process Introduction “Unless women are engendered, they will be endangered” Human Development Report, 1995 Women’s empowerment is an emerging and multi-dimensional concept which is continually being defined, redefined, described and exemplified by social scientists across the whole globe. Generally, the concept is correlated and inter-connected with the principle of gender parity and non-discrimination in all the affairs of life (Malhotra, Schuler, & Boender, 2002).It is frequently associated with the structural transformation of society by labor reforms, equal access to various resources, granting the right of decision making, educational and economic opportunities. Empowering women has been a neglected dimension since centuries; however, at the moment the concept is being rightly recognized as one of the paramount policy goals. It is imperative just not for women cause only, rather for the progress and socio economic development of the whole society. In the Asian continent, among the eight South Asian states, Bhutan, Maldives and Sri Lanka have high ranking in terms of socio economic development as compared to others (Pakistan, India, Afghanistan, Nepal and Bangladesh).Human Development Index (HDI) reports indicated that women empowerment wasn’t satisfactory in Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Nepal and Afghanistan (Dutta, 2014). _______________________________ *Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science and IR, University of Sargodha **Visiting Faculty, Department of Pakistan Studies, GCU Faisalabad ***Visiting lecturer, Department of Pakistan Studies, GCU Faisalabad