PESHAWAR: “When candidates knock at the door during election campaign, only men respond. Women voters are never asked as if they don’t count,” says young Anar Gula from Takht-i-Nusrati, a remote village of Karak district.

Women are almost half of the total population but like Anar Gula, many of them feel the candidates hardly address them and their issues.

According to the Election Commission of Pakistan, voters registered in the province total 12.266 million, including 5.257 million women and 7.008 million men.

Although almost half of the voters (women) may seem invisible, their voice could sway results if they’re taken into account by candidates in the upcoming elections.

While most candidates of political parties remain engaged in all-male public meetings, they fail to reach out to women voters, whose opinion equally counts in the democratic process.

“No one asks her what she wants and that her opinion matters,” said Anar Gula while talking about the status and situation of women in her area.

All major political parties have unfolded their election manifestos and most of them have given importance to the women’s rights and gender equality but it is a fact that women contesting elections still find addressing a public meeting out of the question due to local norms and culture.

Also, women voters in a constituency are not directly contacted by men candidates. As a result, women in many families cast vote on the advice of their male relatives.

Noor Bibi, an elderly woman from Tank, asked why women wouldn’t want to vote and said women cast votes but their problems were never solved by winning candidates.

“Who cares for women and keeping promises with them,” complained the woman, who has seen many elections in her life and subsequent disappointment.

She said poverty and lack of employment opportunities were major problems, which women in her area faced.

While the people contesting the upcoming elections have yet to reach out to women voters, in the past, candidates of some political parties and ‘self-righteous’ local elders in places like Swabi, Dir, Peshawar and other areas through deals had not allowed women to step out and vote.

Shukriya from the suburbs of Peshawar confirmed it, saying women were still stopped from exercising their right to vote.

She, however, said she was disappointed in former lawmakers for failing to address local women’s problems.

Farida, who hails from Swabi, proudly says that people in her area are progressive and women take part in election related activities. However, she says the problems of women are not much different as they also want facilities like electricity, gas, employment etc.

Uzma, who belongs to Swabi, said men didn’t allow women to poll their vote.

“If women are not allowed to vote, it means you deprive them of their right to elect a government of their choice,” she said.

Parties like Pakistan People’s Party, Jamaat-i-Islami, Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz promise equal representation of women in all fields of life, while Awami National Party and Pakistan Tehrik-i-Insaf specifically mention in their election manifestos that those barring women from taking part in voting will not be tolerated.

There’s the chance that the candidates, who manage to take women to polling stations on the day of election, will be winners.