Exploring Quota and Non-Quota Women MPs Membership in Parliamentary Committees: A Case Study of the Punjab Assembly, Pakistan

Parliamentary committees are significant for an understanding of gendered politics in legislatures. The underlying question is the extent to which quota and non-quota MPs are being included in decision making through various parliamentary committees. In this article, the Punjab assembly (largest provincial assembly of Pakistan) is used as a case to understand the assignment of reserved and directly elected women MPs in different committees based on gender and prestige type. By using quantitative methods, the secondary data sets accessed from the web site of the Punjab assembly during (2002-2023) legislative assemblies were used. Additionally, interviews from the women MPs were also used as complementary data to support the findings of a quantitative data set. Results showed that women MPs on reserved seats are over-represented in feminine committees/low prestigious committees and under-represented in medium/neutral and masculine committees. In contrast, directly elected women MPs are preferred, and are assigned to high prestigious/masculine committees disproportionately to their strength in Punjab assembly.