The Elections Act 2017 passed by Pakistani parliament in 2017 encouraged transgender people to vote and also to contest in elections. Five transgender candidates took up the challenge, running successful, albeit losing, political campaigns.

Although the recent elections in Pakistan have come under fire and there are serious allegations of rigging and poor management, many observers consider the active participation of women voters to be the best thing to come out of this national exercise.

Kalash people live in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, in the northern part of Pakistan, tucked away in three valleys. Anam Gill visited them.

Seema Azis is one of the most prominent business leaders in South Asia. However, she is mostly known for her work in improving the education sector of Pakistan. Aziz runs more than 700 English medium schools in Pakistan for the underprivileged.

A mother and her child in Chitral district, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa

As I started to write this blog today, a fellow journalist back in Pakistan tweeted about an attack on his cousin, a school headmistress in the Charsadda city of the northern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province.

The parliament in Islamabad

The concept behind reserved seats for women in Pakistan’s parliament has been to empower women and give them representation in policy making. However, most women who make it to the provincial assemblies and parliament are not satisfied with the role they could play.

It was very late in the night when my mother woke me up and asked me to take her to the hospital. She was sweating heavily and obviously not feeling well. We women were alone at home because my brother was out with his friends. I tried to call him but he was out of reach. Instead of wasting more time knocking our neighbors’ doors or calling our relatives to come and help us, I simply took the car and drove to the emergency unit at the nearest hospital.