Twenty-three of the 130 Sindh Provincial Assembly (PA) constituencies recorded a voter registration gender gap exceeding the legally permissible threshold of 10 percent, according to the constituency-wise electoral rolls published by the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) on 3 February 2026.
During the 2018 general elections, 66 PA constituencies in Sindh — representing 50.8 percent of the provincial total — recorded a voter registration gender gap above 10 percent. At that time, more than half of the province’s PA constituencies failed to meet the legal standard, reflecting a pervasive and systemic disparity in women’s electoral inclusion across Sindh.
By the 2024 general elections, 35 constituencies had reduced their gender gap below the legal threshold, bringing the number of non-compliant PA constituencies down from 66 to 31 — or 23.8 percent of the provincial total. The reduction represented meaningful progress, though the scale of the remaining disparity indicated that improvement remained incomplete and unevenly distributed.
The post-2024 period has produced only marginal additional progress. Eight constituencies reduced their gender gap below the 10 percent threshold following the 2024 elections, bringing the current number of non-compliant PA constituencies to 23 — or 17.7 percent of the provincial total. As of the most recent ECP data, 107 of Sindh’s 130 PA constituencies record a gender gap at or below the 10 percent threshold, representing 82.3 percent of the province.
While the overall trajectory shows a significant decline from 50.8 percent of constituencies in 2018 to 17.7 percent in 2026, the pace of reduction has slowed considerably in the post-election period. The modest improvement of only eight constituencies following the 2024 elections — against a reduction of 35 in the preceding cycle — suggests a risk of stagnation in constituencies where the gap has proved most resistant to change. The persistence of non-compliance in nearly one-fifth of Sindh’s PA constituencies is a reflection of structural, administrative, and sociocultural barriers that continue to obstruct women’s equitable inclusion in the electoral process.
What the Elections Act requires
The continued presence of a gap of this nature underscores the need for sustained institutional action. Section 47(1) of the Elections Act, 2017 requires the ECP to annually publish disaggregated data of registered male and female voters in each constituency and to highlight the difference in their numbers. Under Section 47(2), the Commission must take special measures in any constituency where this difference exceeds 10 percent, including measures to reduce this variation. Section 47(3) further specifies that these measures shall include action by the National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA) to expedite National Identity Card (NIC) issuance for women in affected constituencies, and by the ECP to enrol them as voters in the relevant electoral area. This provision places a clear, joint institutional responsibility on both NADRA and the ECP to address the gender gap where it crosses the legal threshold.
These measures include targeted voter registration campaigns, NIC facilitation drives, and community-level outreach to address the barriers that continue to limit women’s registration. Consistent implementation of these provisions is critical to ensuring that the downward trend in Sindh’s gender gap is sustained and accelerated in the electoral rolls ahead of the next general elections.
