DHURNAL, Pakistan, Feb 5, 2024 (BSS/AFP) - Perched on her traditional charpai

bed, Naeem Kausir says she would like to vote in Pakistan's upcoming election
-- if only the men in her family would let her.

Like all the women in her town, the 60-year-old former headmistress and her
seven daughters -- six already university educated -- are forbidden from
voting by their male elders.

"Whether by her husband, father, son or brother, a woman is forced. She lacks
the autonomy to make decisions independently," said Kausir, covered in a veil
in the courtyard of her home.

"These men lack the courage to grant women their rights," the widow told AFP.

Although voting is a constitutional right for all adults in Pakistan, some
rural areas in the socially conservative country are still ruled by a
patriarchal system of male village elders who wield significant influence in
their communities.

In the village of Dhurnal in Punjab, spread across crop fields and home to
several thousand people, men profess myriad reasons for the ban of more than
50 years.

"Several years ago, during a period of low literacy rates, a council chairman
decreed that if men went out to vote, and women followed suit, who would
manage the household and childcare responsibilities?" said Malik Muhammad, a
member of the village council.

"This disruption, just for one vote, was deemed unnecessary," he concluded.

Muhammad Aslam, a shopkeeper, claims it is to protect women from "local
hostilities" about politics, including a distant occasion that few seem to
remember in the village when an argument broke out at a polling station.

Others told AFP it was simply down to "tradition".

- First Muslim woman leader -

The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) has stressed that it has the
authority to declare the process null and void in any constituency where
women are barred from participating.

In reality, progress has been slow outside of cities and in areas that
operate under tribal norms, with millions of women still missing from the
electoral rolls.

The elders in Dhurnal rely on neighbouring villages to fill a government-
imposed quota which maintains that 10 percent of votes cast in every
constituency must be by women.

Those who are allowed to vote are often pressured to pick a candidate of a
male relative's choice.

In the mountainous region of Kohistan in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province home to
almost 800,000 people, religious clerics last month decreed it un-Islamic for
women to take part in electoral campaigns.

Fatima Tu Zara Butt, a legal expert and a women's rights activist, said women
are allowed to vote in Islam, but that religion is often exploited or
misunderstood in Pakistan.

"Regardless of their level of education or financial stability, women in
Pakistan can only make decisions with the 'support' of the men around them,"
she said.

Pakistan famously elected the world's first Muslim woman leader in 1988 --
Benazir Bhutto, who introduced policies that boosted education and access to
money for women, and fought against religious extremism after military
dictator Zia ul-Haq had introduced a new era of Islamisation that rolled back
women's rights.

However, more than 30 years later, only 355 women are competing for national
assembly seats in Thursday's election, compared to 6,094 men, the election
commission has said.

Pakistan reserves 60 of the 342 National Assembly seats for women and 10 for
religious minorities in the Muslim-majority country, but political parties
rarely allow women to contest outside of this quota.

Those who do stand often do so only with the backing of male relatives who
are already established in local politics.

"I have never seen any independent candidates contesting elections on their
own," Zara Butt added.

- 'Everyone's right' -

Forty-year-old Robina Kausir, a healthcare worker, said a growing number of
women in Dhurnal want to exercise their right to vote but they fear backlash
from the community if they do -- particularly the looming threat of divorce,
a matter of great shame in Pakistani culture.

She credits part of the shift to access to information as a result of the
rising use of smartphones and social media.

"These men instil fear in their women - many threaten their wives," she told
AFP.

Robina, backed by her husband, is one of the few prepared to take the risk.

When cricketing legend Imran Khan swept to power in the 2018 election, Robina
arranged for a minibus to take women to the local polling station.

Only a handful joined her, but she still marked it as a success and will do
the same on Thursday's election.

"I was abused but I do not care, I will keep fighting for everyone's right to
vote," Robina said.