ABSTRACT
South Asia has seen the world's first woman prime minister - Srimavo Bandaranayake - come to power in Sri Lanka, one of the longest serving prime ministers anywhere in the world - Indira Gandhi - in India and the youngest woman prime minister — Benazir Bhutto — in Pakistan. In Bangladesh, two women have held the position of Prime Minister since 1991 - Begums Zia and Sheikh. And yet, women's representation in politics in the region has been very limited and continues to be so at the national level. In this chapter we review the quota debates and provisions in three countries of South Asia - Bangladesh, India and Pakistan (see Table 9.1). While there has been some empirical work done on the process by which quotas for women were introduced and implemented and on the outcome of the quota for both women representatives and local government institutions in each of the three countries (Bari 1997; Buch 2000a; Mahtab 2003), this is the first comparative study on the issue.
