Legislative Quotas for Women: A global and ... - Aurat Foundation

legitimacy of the system in its observations while hearing 21 petitionschallenging the 18th Constitutional Amendment on July 8, 2010.According to media reports: the Supreme Court full-bench hearingpetitions described the process of nominating persons to seats reservedfor women in legislatures as “selection, and not election” made onpersonal likes and dislikes of heads of parties. 54It will be in the fitness of things if women on reserved seats are elected ina direct and constituency based elections as demanded by the womenrights movement.The Report of the Commission on Inquiry for Women had describedvarious modalities which could be adopted for elections to the women’sreserved seats. A brief summary of the Commission’s recommendationsis as under: 551. One third of the existing constituencies for national and provincialelections should be declared double candidate constituencies, sothat these constituencies would have one representative from thegeneral seats and one woman representative from the reservedseat. Both men and women would have a double vote. Thesespecial constituencies would then be rotated after each election, sothat the entire country gets covered after three terms and from thefourth rotation starts anew.2. The entire country should be divided into new enlargedconstituencies for women’s reserved seats, each constituencycomprising three normal sized constituencies. In this system theentire electorate would have a double vote.3. Even larger constituencies for women’s reserved seats beestablished, comprising six or nine normal sized constituencieswhich should be declared multi-member constituencies. Votersfrom these constituencies would elect two or three women to thereserved seats allocated to them, while also voting for their54 http://archives.dawn.com/archives/3562955 Report of the Commission ion Inquiry for women, 199848