The writer teaches politics and sociology at Lums. GENDER inequality takes a variety of forms in Pakistan, but a fundamental one — and one whose rectification may help address all other variants as well — is political inequality. The constituents of gender-based variation in politics include barriers to voting, barriers to seeking elected office, barriers to access within political parties, and barriers to representation in policymaking and governance. In recent years, there has been a spate of excellent academic and policy research that captures the baseline context of gender-based political inequality in the country. What’s being captured, however, makes for grim reading.