WPS5692


Policy Research Working Paper                       5692




                        Together We Will
       Experimental Evidence on Female Voting Behavior
                         in Pakistan

                                 Xavier Giné
                               Ghazala Mansuri




The World Bank
Development Research Group
Finance and Private Sector Development Team
  &
Poverty Reduction and Economic Management Network
Poverty Reduction and Equity
June 2011
Policy Research Working Paper 5692


  Abstract
  In many emerging democracies women are less likely to                             12 percentage points more likely to vote, and are also
  vote than men and, when they do vote, are more likely to                          more likely to exercise independence in candidate choice,
  follow the wishes of household males. The authors assess                          indicating large spillovers. Data from polling stations
  the impact of a voter awareness campaign on female                                suggest that treating 10 women increased turnout by
  turnout and candidate choice. Geographic clusters within                          about 9 votes, resulting in a cost per vote of US$ 2.3.
  villages were randomly assigned to treatment or control,                          Finally, a 10 percent increase in the share of treated
  and within treated clusters, some households were left                            women at the polling station led to a 6 percent decrease
  untreated. Compared with women in control clusters,                               in the share of votes of the winning party.
  both treated and untreated women in treated clusters are




  This paper is a product of the Finance and Private Sector Development Team, Development Research Group; and the
  Poverty Reduction and Equity Team, Poverty Reduction and Economic Management Network. It is part of a larger effort
  by the World Bank to provide open access to its research and make a contribution to development policy discussions
  around the world. Policy Research Working Papers are also posted on the Web at http://econ.worldbank.org. The authors
  may be contacted at xgine@worldbank.org and gmansuri@worldbank.org.




         The Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates the findings of work in progress to encourage the exchange of ideas about development
         issues. An objective of the series is to get the findings out quickly, even if the presentations are less than fully polished. The papers carry the
         names of the authors and should be cited accordingly. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those
         of the authors. They do not necessarily represent the views of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/World Bank and
         its affiliated organizations, or those of the Executive Directors of the World Bank or the governments they represent.


                                                       Produced by the Research Support Team
       Together We Will: Experimental Evidence on Female
                  Voting Behavior in Pakistan
                                  Xavier Giné and Ghazala Mansuri




JEL: D72, P16, 012

Keyword: externalities, information campaign, voting behavior, elections, field experiment




Giné: Development Research Group, The World Bank (e-mail:xgine@worldbank.org). Mansuri: Development
Research Group, The World Bank (e-mail: gmansuri@worldbank.org). We thank Abhijit Banerjee, Marco Castillo,
Rachel Croson, Jishnu Das, Quy-Toan Do, Marcel Fafchamps, Haris Gazdar, Donald Green, Alan Gerber, Dan
Houser, Macartan Humphreys, Raquel Fernandez, Shareen Joshi, Stuti Khemani, Betsy Levy-Paluck, Monica
Martínez-Bravo, Kevin McCabe, Berk Ozler, Ragan Petrie, Debraj Ray, Mark Rosenzweig, Jennifer Tobin and
Pedro Vicente for valuable discussions and advice. We are especially grateful to the following for their help and
support in organizing the experiment: Shahnaz Kapadia, at ECI Islamabad, for her help with designing and pilot
testing the information campaign; Irfan Ahmad at RCONs, Lahore, for managing all field operations and data
collection; Sughra and Ashiq Solangi of The Marvi Rural Development Organization, Sukkur, for their tremendous
support to the team throughout; Qazi Azmat Isa at the World Bank Office in Islamabad and Kamran Akbar at the
Pakistan Poverty Alleviation Program (PPAF) in Islamabad for their support and encouragement. This project was
jointly funded by the Development Research Group at the World Bank and the PPAF. Paloma Acevedo, Paola de
Baldomero, Jordi de la Torre and Santhosh Srinivasan provided outstanding research assistance. The views
expressed herein are those of the authors and should not be attributed to the World Bank, its executive directors, or
the countries they represent.
1. Introduction

A basic premise of representative democracy is that those who are subject to policy should have
a voice in its making. Although women account for half of the world‘s population, they have
historically lagged behind men in legal and political rights. In recognition of this, suffrage was
extended to women in most western democracies in the early 20th century and the new
democracies that emerged after WWII followed suit and granted women de jure rights to
political participation in all democratic institutions.1

Despite these improvements, women are still far less likely than men to stand for public office,
even in developed countries with older democracies. They are also less likely to participate in
the electoral process as voters or to exercise independence in candidate choice when they do
vote. Instead, women report voting in accordance with the preferences of the caste, clan or
household head in contrast to men of all ages (CLRAE, 2002).2

While women‘s relative absence from elected public office has received considerable policy
attention in recent years3, there have been few attempts to reduce barriers to women‘s
participation as voters, and even less attention has been paid to the use of women as passive vote
banks, when they do participate. If preferences over the allocation of public resources vary by
gender, this neglect could have implications for public policy, in addition to equity related
concerns.4




1
  These rights were also brought into international law by several important agreements to which most countries are
signatories. These include the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), the Convention on the Political Rights
of Women (1952); the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1966); and the Convention on the
Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (1979).
2
  See also Zia and Bari (1999) and Bari (2005) for Pakistan.
3
  A number of countries have passed legislation requiring fixed quotas for women. In South Asia, for example,
India, Pakistan and Bangladesh have all instituted quotas for women in both local and national assemblies.
4
  Chattopadhyay and Duflo (2004) exploit the quota introduced for women in the Indian Gram Panchayats and find
that elected women leaders are more likely to provide public goods preferred by women. Lott and Kenny (1999) find
that women‘s suffrage in the US increased overall government revenues and expenditures and has led to more liberal
voting patterns. Edlund and Pande (2002) find that the decline in marriage has contributed to the shift by women
voters in the US towards the Democratic Party. Several studies of intra-household resource allocation (e.g. Thomas
(1990), Lundberg and Pollack (1997) and Hoddinott and Haddad (1995)) have also shown that women tend to make
different choices over the allocation of household budgets, such as higher investments in health and the education of
children. Croson and Gneezy (2009) review the experimental literature on gender differences in preferences related
to risk, social attitudes and competition.


                                                         2
Women in emerging democracies may face two distinct barriers to exercising their right to vote
for a candidate of their choice. First, costs of participation may be too high. Traditions or cultural
stereotypes may discourage the exercise of own preferences, mobility constraints may limit
participation and, if there are expectations of voter intimidation or violence, personal security
concerns may also loom larger among females. Second, women may have fewer or poorer
sources of information about the significance of political participation or the balloting process,
perhaps due in part to illiteracy and limited mobility. Lack of information may also reinforce
stereotypes that further disengage women from public life.

However, while attitudes and social mores change slowly, information provision can occur
relatively quickly.5 If lack of awareness limits participation, as studies suggest, then access to
information could enhance both equity and allocative efficiency as women select candidates that
best reflect their preferences. At the same time, the mere act of participation may also serve to
weaken pejorative perceptions about female efficacy that limit women‘s engagement in public
life (Beaman et al., 2007).

We test these ideas by conducting a field experiment to assess the impact of information on
female turnout and independence of candidate choice. The setting for the experiment is rural
Pakistan where women still face significant barriers to effective political participation, despite
legislative reforms aimed at enhancing female participation in public life (Zia and Bari, 1999).6
The awareness campaign was conducted just before the 2008 national elections. Study villages
were divided into geographical clusters which were randomly assigned to treatment or control.
Within treated clusters, only a subset of sample households was randomly assigned to receive a
door-to-door awareness campaign. This allows us to assess the magnitude of spillovers within
treated clusters without confronting the usual set of identification problems (Manski, 1993;
1995).




5
  A number of recent studies have looked at the role of geography, shifts in technology and the development of
institutions in the formation of cultural attitudes and beliefs about gender roles. See for e.g. Alesina et al (2010),
Alesina and Giuliano (2010), Fernandez (2007), Fernandez and Fogli (2009) and Fortin (2005).
6
  Zia and Bari report that women's registration as voters is often considered neither necessary nor appropriate by
either household males or political parties. They also note that, in addition to cultural restrictions on mobility and
low levels of literacy, women's lack of knowledge about the electoral system and about voting procedures
constitutes an important barrier to the registration of women and female turnout in elections (pg. 89).

                                                            3
The campaign was developed as a set of simple visual aids with two different messages: the
importance of voting which focused on the relationship between the electoral process and policy,
and the significance of secret balloting which explained the actual balloting process. Treated
women received either the first message or the first and the second, allowing us to test whether
the knowledge that ballots are cast in an environment of secrecy enhances female participation,
as well as independence in candidate choice.

We find that turnout increases by about 12 percent for women in treated households compared to
women in control clusters, with somewhat larger and more precise effects for women exposed to
both messages. More importantly, we find comparable turnout rates for treated women and their
untreated close neighbors, indicating large geographical spillovers. We then assess whether
spillovers among close friends are larger than those among neighbors. The results are
qualitatively similar. This is not too surprising given that close friends typically reside nearby. In
addition, we use the GPS location of households to estimate spillovers beyond the (arbitrary)
boundaries of the treatment clusters and find even larger effects.

We also use administrative data from all polling stations that served the study villages and find
that for every 10 treated women, (roughly 4 households), female turnout increases by about 9
additional votes. Once we take this externality into account, the cost of the intervention drops
from US $16.7 to about US $2.2 per additional vote. In contrast, using the same administrative
data we find no effect on male turnout, suggesting either that the provision of information on
electoral participation and processes is less salient for men or that there is little communication
about political matters between men and women. Of course, it is also possible that men are
simply not influenced by information provided by women.

We then study whether the campaign influenced candidate and party choice. We find that it did.
Treated women are significantly more likely to vote for the second most voted for political party.
Control women in treated clusters behaved again as if directly treated, confirming once more the
importance of social interactions. Polling station data show as well that an increase of 10 percent
in the share of treated women led to decrease in the share of female votes for the winning party
of 6 percent. These results suggest that the campaign could have influenced the share of votes at
the constituency level, had it been implemented at a larger scale.


                                                  4
Given this result, we next check whether treatment decreases the male head‘s knowledge of the
candidate choice of women in his household. Using follow-up survey data which asked the male
head and each woman in the household about whether other women in the household had cast a
vote and for whom they had voted, we construct cross-reports regarding candidate choice. Using
these cross-reports, we find that male heads in treated households are indeed significantly less
informed about the candidate choice of women in their households.

Interestingly, we also find evidence of cognitive dissonance (e.g., Mullainathan and Washington,
2009). Women in control clusters, among whom turnout was lower, were less likely to believe
that the election was free and fair and more likely to report witnessing or hearing instances of
violence in the village, compared to reports by women in treated clusters.

While there is an extensive literature on the impact of Get-out the Vote or GOTV campaigns in
developed countries, and in the US in particular (see Gerber and Green, 2000a and 2000b), much
less is known about the impact of such campaigns in developing countries where voters tend to
have poorer access to information and institutionalized party structures are also much less
developed (Aker et al. 2010, Banerjee et al. 2010 and Pande 2011 for a review).7,8

This paper contributes, therefore to two literatures. First, it adds to this nascent literature on pre-
election voter information campaigns in developing countries. Second, it is the only paper which,
to our knowledge, assesses the impact of information externalities on voter turnout and candidate
choice. This is critical for correctly measuring the cost-effectiveness of an information campaign,
but it is also important for assessing the types of information that can be successfully transmitted
through social networks., In this regard, our paper is closest to Duflo and Saez (2003) and
contributes also to the burgeoning literature on social networks and peer effects (e.g. Sacerdote,
2000 and Kling, Liebman and Katz, 2007).

7
  In an experiment in the US where voters received postcards with information about their voting record, Gerber et
al. (2008) find that turnout increased by about 8 percent in households that were shown their voting records as well
as that of their neighbors. This increase in turnout is comparable to the impact of direct canvassing. Perhaps more
related to our study, Nickerson (2008) conducted a door-to-door canvassing experiment to assess information
spillovers within the household. He targets households with two registered voters and finds that the member that did
not answer the door is nearly 60% as likely to vote as the treated member.
8
  In developing countries there is a small experimental literature that has focused on electoral violence, clientelism
and vote buying in the context of developing countries. Collier and Vicente (2007), for example, study the effect of
an information campaign against electoral violence in Nigeria. Wantchekon (2003) has examined the effectiveness
of clientelist messages in Benin and Vicente (2007) analyzes an information campaign against vote buying in Sao
Tome and Principe, Vicente and Wantchekon (2009) provides a review.

                                                          5
While peer pressure may have contributed to the increase in turnout we observe (Funk, 2010),
we provide evidence suggesting that the information content of the campaign mattered. First,
control women in treated clusters are far more likely than women in control clusters to discuss
political issues with their neighbors, including political party and candidate positions and the
importance of voting in accordance with one‘s own preferences. Second, male heads of control
households in clusters treated with the message about the secrecy of the balloting process are less
informed about the candidates chosen by women in their household, compared to control
households in clusters treated with the message about the importance of voting only. This is
evidence that even the more nuanced message about the secrecy of voting was conveyed to
control women in treated clusters.9 10

The remainder of the paper is organized as follows. Section 2 describes the context of the 2008
election, the design of our experiment and the data. Section 3 describes the empirical strategy
and results. In particular, Section 3.1 discusses the impact of the information campaign on
turnout and assesses the size and significance of information spillovers, Section 3.2 discusses the
evidence on independence of candidate choice, Section 3.3 examines the interaction between
electoral competition and information provision and Section 3.4 assesses the impact of the
campaign on knowledge and perceptions. Section 4 provides a cost-benefit analysis of the
intervention and Section 5 concludes.

2. Context and Experiment Design

The experiment was carried out in collaboration with the Pakistan Poverty Alleviation Fund
(PPAF), the Marvi Rural Development Organization (MRDO), Research Consultants (RCons),
ECI and the World Bank. PPAF is an apex institution created in 2000 with World Bank funding.
PPAF provides capacity building and funding for community based development and


9
  In this sense the awareness campaign studied here is quite different from most GOTV campaigns, whose objective
is to increase turnout by persuading subjects to vote. The awareness campaign, in contrast, is designed to inform
women about their rights in the electoral process and how to exercise them.
10
   One could also argue that the increase in turnout was due to the mere salience of the campaign (e.g. Zwane et al.
forthcoming). However, at the time of the visit, households were already subject to multiple stimuli to vote. Indeed,
over 75 percent of them reported receiving a visit prior to the election from party volunteers asking for their vote. In
addition, one could argue that the mere visit could have motivated treated women to vote (if they felt special for
having been chosen and voted out of reciprocity). This is unlikely because untreated women in treated clusters (not
chosen to receive the visit) show comparable turnout rates to directly treated women.


                                                           6
microfinance to its partner organizations, which are mostly NGOs. MRDO is one such non-
partisan NGO funded primarily by PPAF, that mobilizes women using a community based
approach. RCons, a survey firm, helped MRDO implement the awareness campaign and
collected the baseline and follow-up data. ECI, a non-partisan local training firm, collaborated in
the design of the campaign. ECI had prior experience with the development of visual aids and
pamphlets related to electoral participation and the balloting process. It was also actively
engaged in the training of local election officers nationwide prior to the elections.

2.1 Context

The campaign was carried out in the districts of Sukkur and Khairpur in the southern province of
Sindh. The districts were selected because of sharp electoral competition between the two main
political parties, the Pakistan People‘s Party Parliamentarians (PPPP), which has a secular-left
leaning platform and the Pakistan Muslim League Functional (PMLF), which was allied with the
military regime.

The initial sample included 12 villages, 6 villages from each district, and 24 polling stations from
two constituencies.11 All candidates from both parties in these two constituencies were male.
Villages were chosen to ensure variation in expected political competition at the polling station
level, but given the context of the 2008 elections, 3 villages (3 polling stations) had to be
dropped because the safety of the canvassing teams could not be guaranteed. The polling stations
in these 3 villages were relatively more contested than those in our final sample of 9 villages and
21 polling stations.

Indeed, the 2008 national elections were held in an environment that was politically charged.
After seven years of military rule, culminating in widespread opposition, the government
declared emergency rule. The sitting judges of the Supreme Court were dismissed and there were
fears that the incumbent government would engage in massive rigging. Scheduled initially for
January 8th, 2008, the elections were postponed to February 18th, 2008 because Benazir Bhutto,


11
  Twelve polling stations were from the National Assembly constituency NA-199 (Sukkur) and the remaining 12
from NA-215 (Khairpur). NA-199 had a total of 242 polling stations while NA-215 had 270 polling stations. The
same 12 polling stations belonged to Provincial Assembly constituencies PS-4 (Sukkur) and PS-32 (Khairpur),
respectively. PS-4 had 125 polling stations in total and PS-32 had 114 (see http://www.ecp.gov.pk/ for more
information).

                                                       7
the leader of the PPPP, and a twice elected Prime Minister, was assassinated on December 27th,
2007.

In Sindh, traditionally a PPPP stronghold, a large turnout and a PPPP landslide was being
anticipated due to a possible sympathy vote for Bhutto. At the same time, the expected PPPP
landslide could have served to discourage supporters of PML-F, depressing turnout. Finally,
there were concerns about electoral rigging and voter intimidation by the incumbent military
government, though these decreased after Bhutto‘s assassination and the increased visibility of
the elections. The net effect of these tendencies on turnout and party choice, particularly for
women, was uncertain.

The campaign was delivered door-to-door by a team of two women and was only attended by the
women in each household. No men were allowed to be present during the sessions.12 It was
designed as a set of simple visual aids accompanied by a well rehearsed and limited script. The
campaign included two nonpartisan messages: the first focused on the importance of voting, the
relationship between the electoral process and policy, including village development outcomes,
while the second focused on the actual balloting process (the structure of a typical voting station
and booth, the fact that male and female booths are separate, the secrecy of the ballot and the
basic appearance of the ballot paper). The information campaign never mentioned a political
party or candidate by name. As mentioned, this also distinguishes our awareness campaign from
a GOTV campaign.13 Appendix A contains the translation of the script and Appendix B the
translated visual aids.



12
   In many cases, men were not at home at the time of the visit, which took place during the morning and early
afternoon. If men were home, they were requested to allow the female team members to meet with the women alone.
In most cases this did not pose a problem since men are not usually present in an all women‘s gathering. In the few
cases where men were reluctant to leave, the male supervisor discussed the information campaign in general terms
with them and obtained agreement.
13
   A GOTV campaign can be partisan or not, though a number of experimental studies have shown that partisan
messages are less successful in motivating turnout. Cardy (2005), for example, finds that neither partisan direct mail
nor partisan phone calls - used independently or together - managed to garner a significant voter response. In a
similar vein, Gerber and Green (2000b) find that non-partisan messages are particularly effective in mobilizing
unaffiliated past voters. The authors hypothesize that partisan voters may already receive adequate encouragement
from their respective political parties while unaffiliated voters do not. Moreover, they speculate that politically
unattached voters may also have been impressed by the non-partisan appeal to civic responsibility. Horiuchi et al.
(2007) also find that voters are less likely to abstain when they receive policy information about both ruling and
opposition parties through their official party websites. The information effects are larger among those voters who
were planning to vote, but were undecided about which party to vote for.

                                                          8
The campaign was implemented door-to-door for two main reasons. First, it provided a high
degree of control over which households received the campaign and which did not, which is
critical to measuring information spillovers and the cost-effectiveness of the campaign. Second,
door-to-door information campaigns in the US have proven more cost-effective than other
strategies like phone calls and direct mailings.14 In our context, door-to-door visits were also the
most feasible choice given the low levels of literacy and cell-phone ownership among women,
combined with low female mobility.15

Table 1 Panel C indicates that female literacy rates are indeed very low in our study area, as they
are all over rural Sindh. Less than 20 percent of adult women have any formal schooling.
Women also have rather limited mobility even within their own villages. Most women in our
sample can travel within the village on their own or accompanied by other females but not
outside the village, where the presence of a male is required.

Appendix Table A2 presents gender differences in access to media, knowledge of current events
and participation in public life. The sample is confined to comparisons between the male head
and his spouse. Women are far less likely to listen to local, national or international news
channels (10 percent of women report listening to BBC compared to 48 percent of men, for
example) and are far less informed about any political issue, including major events like the
imposition of emergency rule in the country, which only 6 percent of women knew about, as
compared to 82 percent of men. Women are also less likely to be able to correctly identify
political party signs and names. Interestingly, this difference is not due to differential access to
TV or radio. Instead it appears that men and women use media very differently.16 Women are
also less engaged with any aspect of village public life. They are far less likely, for example, to
attend community meetings related to village development, attend demonstrations or contact
their local councilor or local party official for any matter. Interestingly, though, when they do



14
   Gerber and Green (2000a) reports on a randomized GOTV campaign conducted in New Haven, Connecticut, just
prior to the 1998 election. The campaign delivered non-partisan messages through personal canvassing, direct
mailings and telephone calls. The study found that personal canvassing had a substantially greater impact on voter
turnout as compared with other modes of contact. Green et al., (2003) and Michelson (2003) find similar results.
15
   See Jacoby and Mansuri (2011)
16
   Table A2 indicates that both radio and TV are widely available and that if anything, women report higher access
than men. Approximately, 42 percent of men and 47 percent of women had access to a radio and about 65 percent of
men and 67 percent of women had access to a TV.

                                                        9
engage, women tend to avoid formal authority and reach out to traditional or religious leaders
(66 percent among women compared to 49 among men).17

2.2 Experimental Design and Data

The timeline of the study is shown in Figure 1. The information campaign was carried out two
weeks prior to the elections (from February 5th to 15th 2008) by 8 teams consisting of one MRDO
female staff and one female enumerator from RCONs each.18 Each sample village was covered
in approximately one day and was divided into contiguous geographical clusters of
approximately 40 households. A cluster was typically one or two contiguous streets in the
village. Clusters were based on geography rather than other household characteristics such as
caste or occupation of household head because restrictions to female mobility suggested that
social interactions would be dictated by physical proximity. Each cluster was then randomly
assigned to receive the importance of voting message (T1), or T1 plus the secrecy of balloting
message (T2) or nothing. The canvassing team selected one cluster in each village at random and
began there. T1 was delivered in this cluster. Next, a gap cluster was left between two selected
clusters. In the second selected cluster a coin toss determined whether T2 was delivered or all
selected households were left as controls. The third selected cluster was then given the opposite
treatment of the second cluster. A typical sample village had about 7 study clusters and 11
geographical clusters in all, including gap clusters. The final sample has 67 clusters in total, 30
assigned to T1, 27 assigned to T2 and 10 left as controls.19 Within each selected cluster,
irrespective of the specific treatment, every 4th household was selected and surveyed, starting at
either end of the cluster. In T1 and T2 clusters, all selected households were assigned to the
respective treatment, with the exception of every 5th selected household which was left as a

17
   These statistics are also consistent with Pakistan‘s rather dismal performance on a range of development
indicators. According to the 1998 Human Development Report, for example, Pakistan ranked 138 out of 174 on the
Human Development Index (HDI), 131 out of 163 on the Gender Development Index (GDI), and 100 out of 102 on
the Gender Empowerment Measure (GEM).
18
   While RCONs team members were new in the villages, MRDO staff had been working in the area, although their
coverage was still low. According to Table 1, only around 11 percent of the women in the sample were MRDO
members. We ensured, however, that MRDO staff did not conduct the campaign in the villages where they had been
working previously. MRDO staff was also not engaged in the collection of the follow-up data. When asked
informally about whether women in the household they had visited to deliver the campaign had voted and for whom,
they did not know. As a result, it is clear that MRDO staff did not have any authority over the household and there
was no expectation that they would obtain future favors if they casted the vote.
19
   We kept one randomly selected control cluster in the survey sample per village. In one larger village, two control
clusters were included in the survey.

                                                         10
control. This generated 2 to 4 controls in each T1 and T2 cluster in addition to the households
selected in the control clusters. Thus, similar to Duflo and Saez (2003), the peer group is fixed
by location and only a subset of the peer group in a treatment cluster is treated. In total, 2,735
women from 1,018 households were reached. Figure 2 maps a section of a study village
containing three clusters delimited by a white solid line. The dots, squares, stars and triangles
indicate the location of the study households. A dot denotes a household in a control cluster, a
square (star) denotes a treated household in a T1 (T2) cluster and a triangle is a control household
in a treated cluster (either T1 or T2). These three clusters are mapped to a polling station whose
location falls outside the map.

During the door-to-door visit, basic data on each sample household was collected, including the
GPS location of the house, a basic roster of all adult women with their past voting record and the
name and address of their closest friend or confidant in the village. The door-to-door visit lasted
about 20 to 25 minutes for treated households and 5 to 10 minutes for control households. None
of the households refused to participate in the awareness campaign or to be interviewed.

A local woman, usually a school teacher, was also identified in each village during the awareness
campaign to assist the canvassing team with the verification of voting, post-election, by checking
the ink stain on each woman‘s hand. This woman was provided the list of sample women whose
thumb mark needed to be verified on election day and the day after the election. This list
included one confidant from each household. The confidant was selected as follows: in every
even numbered household, the confidant of a woman who was either a daughter or a daughter in
law of the household head was selected, while in every odd numbered household, the confidant
of the household head (if the head was a woman) or the head‘s wife, sister, mother or aunt was
selected. Not all households yielded at least one ―eligible‖ woman using this rule, so the final
sample includes 727 confidants whose vote was verified.

Voting verification took place between the evening of February 18th, Election Day, and the
evening of February 19th. The field teams visited each village on February 19th to check 10
percent of the verifier‘s assignment at random and found no significant differences.




                                                 11
During the verification exercise, the verifiers were unable to locate 98 women (and 27
households). This leaves us with a sample of 2,637 women and 991 households. We were able
to verify all 727 confidants.

Attrition of women was unrelated to treatment assignment (see Appendix Table A3), although
we note that T2 households are more likely to attrit. Since the overall household attrition rate is
very low (2.6 percent), this is not a source of concern. In addition, 158 women claimed to have
cast a vote but did not have the requisite ink mark. To be conservative, we treat these women as
not having voted, although the results do not change if we consider them as voters.

Verification was followed by a post-election survey of the same 2,637 women in March 2008.
We ensured that the team of enumerators that visited a given household at follow-up was
different from the one that had delivered the awareness campaign. The survey collected
information on household demographics, recall of the door-to-door visits, access to and use of
various media, and knowledge of the balloting process and political candidates, among other
issues. Finally, we collected the official electoral results by gender, candidate and political party
for each of the 21 polling stations which served our sample villages.20

Average turnout among women in our sample is 59 percent, while female turnout in the 21
polling stations is 47.3 percent. At the constituency level, total turnout was 39.2 percent in
Khairpur and 48.6 percent in Sukkur. The corresponding turnout rate (including both males and
females) in the sample polling stations was 41.7 percent and 43 percent, respectively. While
there is significant variation in contestation at the polling station level, the share of PPPP at the
constituency level was a large 70 percent in Khairpur and 73 percent in Sukkur.

Table 2 reports the difference in means of household and woman characteristics across different
samples. See Appendix Table A1 for the definition of the variables used in the paper. Column 1
in Panel A compares treated households to all control households, irrespective of whether they
live in treated or control clusters. Columns 2 and 3 compare T1 and T2 households, respectively,
to all control households. Column 4 compares all households in treated clusters (both treated and
control households) to those in control clusters, Column 5 compares treated households to


20
  Results by gender are tabulated at each polling station. This is possible because in Pakistan polling areas and
polling booths are separated by gender.

                                                          12
households in control clusters only and finally Column 6 compares control households in treated
clusters to households in control clusters. Overall, there is little difference in household
characteristics across samples. Treated households have a little more land than control
households in some comparisons, but no difference in assets or housing quality. The P-value of
an F-test that all variables are jointly insignificant can never be rejected. In Panel B, the same
comparisons are reported for woman characteristics. Women in treated households are somewhat
younger in some comparisons and have more young children as a result. They also appear to
have less access to cable TV, perhaps due to their lower mobility. An F-test that all woman level
variables are jointly insignificant cannot be rejected in 4 out of 6 comparisons. In the analysis we
control for all household and woman characteristics that lack balance across treatment and
control groups.

Appendix Table A4 suggests that the intervention was successfully implemented: all treated
women correctly recall having received a visit and none of the control households do. In
addition, most treated women correctly recall the content of the messages delivered. Finally,
control women in treated clusters are far more likely to report talking to their neighbors about
political issues related to party or candidate positions and the importance of voting in accordance
with one‘s own preferences, providing the first piece of evidence of information spillovers.

Follow-up data also suggest that there were no major incidents during Election Day in the study
villages.21 Virtually all sample women had possession of their National Identification Cards
(NICs) before they left for the polling station and ninety percent of the women who voted also
found that the instructions in the polling station were appropriately displayed and that no one
else was present inside the booth when they cast their vote. While most women (61 percent)
travelled on foot, a substantial number (26 percent) used transportation provided by a political
party, which is legal in Pakistan. However, almost all women went to the polling station with
others. The majority were accompanied by female household members (62 percent), or a female
friend or relative (25 percent). The rest went with their spouses or another household male.




21
  In contrast, media reports from the northwest of the country indicate that several female polling stations remained
empty because village elders actively prevented women from voting (AP, February 18th, 2008).

                                                         13
3. Empirical Strategy and Results

3.1 Turnout and Information Spillovers

Because treatment is assigned randomly at the geographical cluster level, its impact on female
turnout can be estimated via the following OLS regression equation:

                                                                                                             (1)

where           indicates whether woman i in household h in cluster c in polling station p in village
v is verified as having voted (1=Yes),                is the treatment indicator (1 if woman i in household
h in cluster c in polling station p in village v received the voting awareness campaign), and
        is a vector of polling station, household and individual woman characteristics. We follow
Bruhn and McKenzie (2009) and include household and woman characteristics from Table 2 that
lack balance (total land owned, age, access to cable, number of children under 5 years old) as
well as variables which are likely to influence voting behavior such as zaat (caste), having an
NIC, mobility, schooling and whether the women seeks advice from a religious leader or ―Pir‖.22

Finally, we include in             the total number of women registered to vote in the polling station.
Inclusion of           corrects for baseline imbalances and increases efficiency by absorbing
residual variation in the data.23 We also include a village fixed effect                to remove the influence
of village specific unobservable characteristics. The term                    is a mean-zero error. Since the
unit of randomization is the geographical cluster, standard errors are always clustered at this
level (Moulton 1986).

A modified version of Equation (1) measures the effect of T1 and T2 separately:

                                                                                                             (2)

The coefficients                 capture the impact of treatment on turnout and are the main
coefficients of interest.


22
   Although the NIC is required to vote, some women in our sample were verified as having voted, though they did
not have an NIC.
23
   Some of the variables were collected at baseline, prior to the campaign, while others were collected in the follow
up survey. In either case, they are not characteristics that could be affected by the campaign.

                                                          14
Table 3 reports the results. In order to capture the importance of within cluster spillovers, we run
Equation (1) in Panel A and Equation (2) in Panel B using four different subsamples. In column
1, we simply compare treated women to all control women, regardless of their location
(comparison T-C). This comparison ignores spillovers altogether by grouping control women in
treated clusters together with (control) women in control clusters. In column 2, we compare
treated clusters with control clusters (comparison TN-CN). Here treated and control women in
treated households are grouped together. In column 3, we compare treated women in treated
clusters with women in control clusters (comparison T-CN). We therefore drop from the analysis
control women in treated clusters. Finally, in column 4 we compare control women in treated
clusters to women in control clusters by dropping treated women from the analysis (comparison
CTN-CN). If spillover effects are important, the coefficient of interest in the first (naïve)
comparison should be smaller since control women in treated clusters are likely to have been
influenced by treated women.

We indeed find that the naïve estimate in column 1, panel A, is lower than that of columns 2-4, at
6 percent. Thus, accounting for within geographical cluster spillovers increases the impact of
treatment to about 12 percent. More importantly, control women in treated clusters are about as
likely to vote as directly treated women.24 In Panel B, the pattern of lower estimates in column 1
compared to those in columns 2-4 is repeated and, as expected, estimates for the impact of T2 are
larger. They are also more precisely estimated, although we are unable to detect statistically
different effects between T1 and T2.25

While this strategy allows us to assess spillovers within treatment clusters effectively, it does not
account for spillovers beyond the geographical cluster. It is plausible that women talk to other
women outside the geographical cluster, especially women located near the boundary of the
cluster. The design included gap clusters to ensure that control clusters were isolated from
treated clusters, but women in these control clusters might have been affected directly or


24
   A regression that includes both a treatment dummy and a dummy for control households in treated clusters shows
that the coefficient on the treatment dummy is 0.117 and the coefficient on the dummy for control households in
treated clusters is 0.124, though neither coefficient is statistically significant at conventional levels. The P-value of
the t-test that both coefficients are equal is 0.798.
25
   The impact of information on turnout for friends is in the same range as that for other control women in treated
clusters, ranging from 10 to 12 percent. This is not surprising given that the vast majority of confidants reside in the
same cluster as the woman who identified them as her friend.

                                                           15
indirectly by the intervention and, as a result, even the estimates of columns 2-4 in Table 3 could
be downward biased.

We use two strategies to assess spillover effects beyond the geographical cluster. First, we use
the GPS location of every household in the study to compute the number of other treated and
control households within a given distance radius and run the following OLS regression
equation:

                                                                                                           (3)

Where             is an indicator for whether household h is not treated but has at least one treated

household within a distance radius of d meters, and                 is the total number of surveyed
households within distance radius d of household h.26 According to Table 1, the average distance
between any two households in a cluster is 194.2 meters (0.12 miles) and the median distance is
roughly 100 meters. In contrast, the median distance between any two surveyed households in a
village is roughly one kilometer (0.67 miles). We consequently use a radius of 75, 100 and 200
meters, which corresponds roughly to the 25th, 50th and 75th percentile of the distance between
any two households within a cluster. The rest of the terms are as defined in Equation (1), and as
before, standard errors are clustered at the geographical cluster level. The coefficients of interest
are    and . This specification allows for a simple test of the extent to which female turnout
among control households near treated households resembles female turnout among directly
treated households.

Panel A of Table 4 reports the results from Equation (3). The treatment effects are robustly
significant and range between 12 to 15 percent. The estimate of                is also significant in columns 1
and 2, and is comparable to the direct treatment effect, suggesting that geographical spillovers
are large. Indeed, the t-test for            is never rejected. The coefficient on the number of
households within a given radius, which can be interpreted as household density, is significant in
columns 2 and 3, suggesting that turnout is higher in more densely populated areas within a
village, perhaps because polling stations tend to locate there. Panel B reports the results for the

26
  It is clear that the dummies      and       cannot both take value 1, since households are either treated or not.
Both dummies take value zero if the household was not treated (          ) and was located more than d meters
from the closest treated household.

                                                        16
OLS regression equation analogous to Equation (2). We again find that the direct (and indirect)
effect of T2 is somewhat larger than that of T1 but the difference is, again, not statistically
significant, at conventional levels, in our sample.

The other strategy we use to study spillover effects beyond the geographical cluster is inspired
by Kremer and Miguel (2001). In order to assess how treatment density within a given radius
affects turnout, we rely on exogenous variation in the local density of treated women, by virtue
of the cluster level randomization.27 Specifically, we construct non-overlapping concentric rings
that are 200 meters wide around each sample woman. For each ring (or band) we compute the
number of treated women within the band, as well as the total number of sample women. Since
the median distance between any two households in the village is about one kilometer, the bands
start at 0-200 meters and extend up to 1,200 meters. The regression specification in this case is

                                                                                                            (4)

Where           is the number of treated women between distance d and D from each sample
woman, and           is the number of women interviewed between distance d and D from each
sample woman. The rest of the terms are as defined in Equation (1) and standard errors are
clustered at the geographical cluster level.

The estimates for          can be used to estimate the average spillover gain for sample women from
having treated women residing in close proximity. The coefficients are reported in Column 2 of
Table 5. Spillover effects are significant up to 1,000 meters. The number of treated women
ranges from 0 to about 161 women, with the largest number of treated women in the 0-200 meter
range. Columns 1 and 2 in Table 5 report the mean and median number of treated women. Using
only the coefficients that are significant, we estimate a mean increase in the odds of voting of 68
percent and a median increase of 45 percent.28 Consistent with our earlier results, once
proximity to other treated women is controlled for, the residual effect of being directly treated is
nil (i.e.       ). Clearly, social interactions among women with mobility constraints are largely


27
   Kremer and Miguel (2001) assess cross-school externalities using exogenous variation in the local density of
treatment school pupils generated by the school-level randomization.
28
   To see this, note that the spillover gain is the average number of treated women located within 0-200 meters times
the average effect of having an additional treated woman in this range (         plus the analogous spillover effects
due to treated women located between 200-400, 400-600, 600-800 and 800-1,000 meters from a woman.

                                                         17
dictated by geographic proximity. Communication is easy and can happen over laundry, cooking
and childcare which require little movement away from home.

Finally, we assess the size of information spillovers at the polling station level, using official
electoral results by gender. Using polling station level information allows us to look at spillovers
for all registered voters in the village and to check potential spillover effects of the information
campaign on both men and women. Sample villages have between 1 and 3 polling stations each
and the average distance of households from their matched polling station is roughly one
kilometer (see Table 1). The outcome of interest in this case,                     is the turnout rate in polling
station p in village v, that is, the number of votes cast by women (men) divided by the number of
registered women (men). Correspondingly, the impact of treatment,                            , is the share of treated
women measured as the number of women treated in polling station p in village v divided by the
number of registered women.29 We include a vector of polling station level variables,                             to
control for polling station level differences. This yields the following regression specification:

                                                                                                (5)

Columns 1 and 2 in Panel A of Table 6 show that an increase in the share of treated women in
the polling station increases female turnout by 86 to 99 percent, depending on whether polling
station controls are included. This provides further confirmation of the size and significance of
the spillover effects we find in Table 5.30 In contrast, there is no effect for male turnout (Table 6,
columns 3 and 4). The fact that men are not influenced by information provided to women could
reflect men‘s greater exposure to political information, wider networks or simply lack of
effective communication between men and women on political issues.

3.2 Candidate Choice

We now turn to the impact of the awareness campaign on candidate choice. Table 7 reports the
results of specifications (1) and (2) above where                      now indicates whether woman i in
household h in cluster c in polling station p in village v reported voting for PPPP and is verified
as having voted. As before, the estimates in column 1 compare treated households to control


29
     The variable       ranges from 0 to 0.77.
30
     Note that the results from Table 5 indicate that spillover effects are significant up to one kilometer, on average.

                                                             18
households in both treated and control clusters. They do not account for spillover effects and as a
result, the coefficient is about one third smaller in magnitude than those of columns 2-4 which do
account for spillover effects. Panel A shows that on average, the campaign reduced the
probability of voting for PPPP by about 15 to 22 percentage points. In Panel B, the impacts for
T2 are again larger in absolute value and more precisely estimated than those of T1, but we
cannot reject the null that the estimates are equal.

Columns 1 and 2 of Panel B of Table 6 confirm these results at the polling station level. The
share of treated women in a polling station reduces the PPPP female vote share. In particular, a
10 percent increase in the share of treated women led to a reduction of 6 percent in the share of
PPPP female votes. Similar to the turnout results of Panel A, columns 3 and 4 of Panel B show
that the campaign had no effect on the PPPP male vote share. Given that the awareness campaign
did not mention any candidate or party by name, the fact that it appears to have affected not just
turnout, but also party vote shares is remarkable and could have important policy consequences.
One plausible explanation for the impact on the party vote shares is that in an environment where
one party (the PPPP) was likely to get a landslide, the campaign may have induced women
supporters of PML-F to vote in greater numbers, thereby increasing the share of PML-F,
although the PML-F is not reputed to be pro-women in any way.

With these results in hand, we now turn to a more direct test of the relevance of the information
content of the campaign by assessing the quality of information possessed by the male head on
the candidate choice of women in his household. In the follow-up survey, the male head was
asked about whether or not each woman in the household had voted and, if she had, whom she
had voted for. The same information was solicited from each woman about all the other women
in the household. Using these unique data, we can check the extent to which these cross-reports,
i.e., the reporter‘s choice of candidates for a woman, are in agreement with the candidate choice
reported by the woman herself. The indicator of agreement takes the value 1 if the two reports
match, and is zero otherwise.31 Candidate choice information is available for all women who

31
  If the reporter stated that a woman did not vote when she reported voting and was verified as doing so, the
agreement indicator is coded as missing. This is the case for less than 5 percent of the reports by men and roughly
one percent of the reports by other women. Likewise, if the reporter answers ―I don‘t know‖ when asked whom a
given woman voted for, we code the agreement indicator as missing. This is the case for 7 out of 1,421 reports by
men (less than 0.5 percent) and only one report by other women. We follow this approach because lack of
knowledge about a woman‘s voting behavior could reflect either indifference or freedom to select whomever she

                                                         19
self-report that they voted, but we restrict the sample to women who were verified as having
voted. The final sample includes 3,713 cross reports and 1,220 women, with the number of
observations per woman varying by household size.32

If the campaign successfully conveyed information on the secrecy of the ballot then household
members, and particularly the male head, should have less information on the candidate choice
of women in the household. We test this with the following regression

                                                                                                          (6)

where             is an indicator that takes the value 1 if the report of individual i on individual j‘s
choice of candidate is correct (according to j‘s self-report);                  is an indicator for whether
reporter i is the male head; and              is reporter i‘s vector of polling station, household and
individual characteristics. The error term is likely to be correlated across all observations with
the same reporter i and reportee j, but we still cluster standard errors at the geographical cluster
level, which is more conservative than using QAP (Krackhardt, 1988) or the correction in
Fafchamps and Gubert (2006).

The results are presented in Table 8. The coefficient of interest is              which captures the
differential effect of treatment on the quality of male reports about the candidate choice of
women in the household. The results indicate that treatment reduces male knowledge about
women‘s chosen candidates by about 8 percentage points. As before, effects are larger and
measured more precisely for T2. Interestingly, the reduction in male knowledge is larger and
significant for controls in treated clusters (column 3) and is the only instance where the effects
for T2 are significantly different from T1 (p-value=0.067). These results are consistent with
reported conversations on political matters with neighbors in Panel B of Table A4. Controls in
treated clusters are far more likely to discuss political issues with their neighbors as compared to
women in control clusters and are equally likely to do so when compared to directly treated

desires. Given the low percentage, results do not change if we recode them with a value 0. Note that out of the 1,220
women who report having voted, and were verified as doing so, only one declined to answer whom she voted for.
32
   Among the 2,637 women in the sample, 1,543 were verified as having voted. The discrepancy in sample sizes of
voters come from 21 percent of women that were verified as having voted but self-reported as not having done so.
Interestingly, we also find evidence of conformity bias (Silver et al., 1986; Harbaugh, 1996) since treated women
that had not voted are significantly more likely to self-report as having done so compared to women in control
clusters (40.6 percent vs. 34.8 percent, p-value= 0.001). This is especially true in more contested polling stations
(45.3 percent vs. 35.8 percent, p-value= 0.000).

                                                         20
women. This confirms the importance of the information provided in the campaign. Even the
more nuanced message about the secrecy of the ballot was apparently conveyed to women not
directly treated.

Table A5 complements these results by comparing the turnout and candidate choice of treated
women with women in control clusters.33 Columns 1 and 2 suggest that treated women are more
likely to vote and to do so precisely for a party (candidate) other than that of the male head (from
2.8 to 10.1 percent). We then check whether the information campaign affected women who had
no prior voting experience. The results in columns 4-9 suggest that this is not the case.
Apparently, the intervention increased independent choice mainly among women who had voted
in the past. As it turns out, women without a prior voting history are also much less likely to
possess NIC cards or be registered to vote and are significantly younger. Since the time between
the information campaign and the election was too short to allow for the acquisition of an NIC or
a change in registration status, this is perhaps not surprising. However, it is also possible that
these women face other barriers to participation.

3.3 Knowledge and Perceptions

An important question, given the large effects we find on turnout and candidate choice, is the
extent to which the campaign affected women‘s knowledge about political issues, perceptions
and behavior other than voting. Each cell in Table 9 reports the coefficient on the treatment
dummy from a regression analogous to Equation (1). The dependent variables are the average of
two knowledge questions on current events, an index of pro democratic views, for example
disagreement with "Only educated should vote" and disapproval of various forms of government
such as "Only one party is allowed to stand for election and hold office" or "The army comes in
to govern the country". (Appendix Table A1 describes all variables in detail). A higher index is
associated with more pro-democratic views. We consider three additional questions: whether the
woman checked her name in the voter list after the intervention and before Election Day;
whether the woman believes that elections were free and fair and finally whether the woman had
witnessed or heard about instances of violence in the village.


33
  The results are very similar when comparing treated clusters versus control clusters or controls in treated clusters
versus control clusters and hence are omitted.

                                                          21
The results suggest that treated women were more likely to check if their name was in the voter
list but were not more knowledgeable about current events nor did they have more pro-
democratic views. Interestingly, columns 5-6 provide strong evidence of cognitive dissonance in
voting. Women in control clusters were less likely to report that elections were free and fair and
were more likely to report instances of violence. Given that control clusters were randomly
located in the village, it is hard to believe that violence was concentrated precisely in these
clusters. Rather, women in control clusters seem to justify their (non-)voting behavior ex-post by
delegitimizing the election process and by reporting more security concerns.

4. Cost-Benefit Analysis

The estimates from tables 3 and 6 can be used to evaluate the cost effectiveness of the
information campaign. The initial development of the campaign cost $3,600. The training of the
canvassing team cost $753 and the delivery of the information campaign cost $5,671. This last
amount includes the costs of collecting basic information about treatment and control households
which would not be incurred in practice if research was not being conducted. Since roughly two-
thirds of sample households were treated, we impute the costs to include 2/3rd of this amount in
the intervention cost. This gives us a total intervention cost of roughly $8,130, including the
costs of developing the information campaign and training enumerators. This is an overestimate
since the development of the information campaign and the training of canvassing teams
represent a fixed cost that can be sizeable if the scale is small. In our case, it constitutes over 50
percent of the overall cost—which if the campaign were scaled up, would be distributed over a
much larger population base. We therefore present the cost under two scenarios: inclusive of the
development of the campaign and enumerator training costs; and based only on the labor and
transport costs of delivering the campaign.

Since we have about 673 treated households, we get a cost of about $5.6 per household using
variable costs only, and $12 per household if we include fixed costs. This implies a cost per vote
of $2.3 ($4.9 if we include fixed costs).34 To see this note that a household has 2.7 women on
average, so we treat about 10 women for every 3.7 households visited. Since the cost of treating
3.7 households is about $21 ($44 if we include fixed costs), and this yields 9 additional votes, the


34
     This is about Rs. 201 (Rs. 453 including fixed costs), using the exchange rate in February 2008.

                                                            22
implied per vote cost is about $2.3 ($4. 9). If we ignore spillover effects and use woman level
estimates, we would obtain a cost per vote of $17.5 ($36.7).35

5. Conclusions

This paper examines the role of pre-election voter information campaigns in inducing broader
participation in one of the largest new democracies of the world. We focus on two related
questions. First, does a lack of information on the electoral process and voting procedures
constitute an important barrier to political participation by women? Second, to what extent can
social interactions among women be instrumental in fostering participation beyond those directly
targeted by the information campaign?


We find overwhelmingly positive answers to both questions. Turnout among women that
received the information campaigned increased by about 12 percent on average, which amounts
to little more than one additional female vote for every 10 women or about 4 households treated.
We also find evidence of independent candidate choice. In treated households, men were
significantly less likely to correctly assess the candidate choices made by women in their
households. In addition, treated women were more likely to vote for a different party than the
male head, especially among women who had voted in the past. Treated women also voted in
larger numbers for PML-F which was seen as less likely to win, thereby changing the vote share
of the losing party in sample polling stations. This is perhaps even more remarkable given that
the field teams were mostly PPPP supporters. This suggests that the intervention empowered
women and thus may have modified the rational calculus of voting (Downs, 1957) by including a
utility gain from the mere act of voting (Riker and Ordeshook, 1968). Consistent with this utility
gain from voting, women in the randomly assigned control clusters are more likely to report that
elections were unfair (and to recall higher instances of violence) in an attempt to justify not
casting a vote ex-post. Among women who had not voted in the past, the campaign proved to be
less effective. More intensive interventions may be required for such women, including
assistance with voter registration.


35
  Green and Gerber (2004) provide a nice summary of the price-per-vote in the US using various methods. They
estimate the cost of a vote in door-to-door campaigns, which are perhaps closest to what we do, to be around $19 per
vote using contract labor but ignoring spillover effects.

                                                        23
We also find evidence of large spillover effects dictated by geographic proximity. Control
women in treated clusters respond to cluster treatment assignment about as much as do directly
treated women. Moving beyond clusters we examine spatial spillovers more generally and find
still larger peer effects. The importance of spillover effects and peer pressure resonates well with
the theoretical literature on voter turnout that emphasizes the role of the group in coordinating
participation either because group members are rewarded by leaders or because they each believe
they are ethically obliged to vote and reinforce one another (see Shachar and Nalebuff, 1999 and
Feddersen, 2004 for a review).


The presence of significant spillovers alters the cost benefit analysis quite substantially. An
additional vote costs more than seven times as much as it does in the absence of spillovers.
Given the relatively low cost of an additional vote ($2.3, using variable costs only), information
campaigns appear to be a relatively cost effective way of increasing turnout among poor rural
women.


While voter awareness campaigns are a staple feature of developed democracies they are
relatively rare in younger and emerging democracies and we are not aware of any other studies
that systematically examine the prospects of such interventions for increasing women‘s
engagement in public life in a developing country context. Arguably, though, the value of
information is likely to be greater in a context where voters have less knowledge about the policy
positions taken by candidates or parties and are engaged in various clientelist relationships that
influence voting decisions. Access to reliable information is likely to be an even greater barrier
for women, who are generally more constrained by lack of education, lower levels of mobility
and less exposure to public spaces in which political ideas can be developed.



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                                              29
Appendix A: Visit Script
Importance of Voting (T1)

Picture 1: Ask “In your opinion, who do you consider responsible for the situation shown in this picture?” If women respond that
politician, feudal lords, bureaucrats and influential personalities, etc. then clarify that in fact you may be responsible for this state.
Also, responsible are all those who do not cast a vote or choose a wrong candidate. You are the ones who empower them. Hence you
need to understand how you can individually affect the decision of who finds solutions to your problems/issues. Do realize your power
and importance of your vote?

Picture 2: Ask “Could your one vote bring a change in your life?” Explain that your vote is of great importance. Through this vote a
representative is elected. It is this elected representative who then sits in the provincial or national Assembly and makes decisions with
regard to what facilities are provided in your area with regard to education, health, security, roads, income earning options, etc.

Picture 3: Many women think that casting a vote makes no difference. Ask women what they think. If they respond that they are
women or are underprivileged and therefore it will make no difference, stress that every Pakistani vote is of equal importance,
regardless of whether the voter is rich or poor, male or female. If they as women do not cast their vote then individuals who have no
interest in women related issues may get elected. Tell the women that there is a lot of power in their vote. People consider that women
are weak. Should all Pakistani women begin to vote, their vote has the power to alter a Government!

Picture 4: Ask the women whether they are aware that when they cast a vote in the General Elections, they actually select two
members: one for the large assembly, which is known as the “National Assembly” on the green ballot paper; and the second for the
small assembly which is “Provincial Assembly” on the white ballot paper. Both the assemblies work separately, with different
domains and duties assigned.

Picture 5: Explain that the major responsibility of the members of the national assembly is legislation. Like setting-up laws for the
protection of women rights; establishing law for peace and stability in the country; relations with foreign countries and construction of
major roads. Reiterate that the color of ballot for the member of national assembly is green.

Picture 6: Ask women whether they know about the responsibilities of the members of the provincial assembly. Explain that
provincial assembly member has a more direct link to the area they live in. It is this member’s responsibility to ensure the provision of
facilities such as girls and boys’ schools, health centers, irrigation and small and home based industries. Remind women that the color
of ballot for the member of provincial assembly is white.

Remind women that in the pictures previously shown they must have noted that the members of National and Provincial Assemblies
are tasked with a lot of work for local and national progress. Ask women whether they think “good” candidates should have specific
qualities in order to be effective at their job. Encourage active participation. Then, show Picture 7 and list the characteristics of an
effective candidate: educated, well reputed, respected for their good character and benevolent to poor; interested to promote projects
that will reduce poverty; ability to understand problems; not misused national resources in the past; and have a positive attitude.

Ask women whether they have information about all the candidates that are contesting elections from their constituency. Show
Picture 8 and ask women about their impression. Explain that there may be many women who do not know about the candidates that
are contesting in their constituency. How then can they compare the qualities of the candidates in order to decide who is the best
candidate?

Ask women if they would cast their vote. If “Yes” then ask how they would decide whom to vote for. “Do they have enough
information about all the members?” and “Do they really know who the best candidate is?” If “Not” then ask where they would obtain
information about the candidates. Show Picture 9 and tell them where information about the candidates could be obtained, e.g. male
members within the family (since they are more aware and exposed), neighbors, teachers/respected members of the community and
party workers.

Picture 10: Ask women what they see. The picture is self explanatory, showing a before and after behavior of a candidate – before the
election the candidate is humble and attentive. After the election they just whisk off without even acknowledging your presence! Ask
the women if this has happened to them. Highlight that this happens when one does not get correct information about the member and
thus one chooses the wrong candidate. Ask women if they ever wonder “why cast a vote when nobody has done anything for us so
far? Everyone is the same and all exploit resources.” Tell women that they may have had bad experiences, but it is still important to
keep the electoral process alive. Show Picture 11 and explain that one can select the best amongst the lot – and only then will better
candidates come forward. This would make clear to the member that you cast your vote sensibly. If this practice continues then soon


                                                                   30
sincere people would also contest elections and we would vote for them because of their genuine attributes. (Just as shown in Picture
7).

Secrecy of Balloting (T2)

Tell women that we have so far established that voting is important. But does everyone have to vote for the same person? Tell women
that even when two sisters go to the market to buy a dress, they generally come away with two different designs, colors, and fabric.
Why does this happen? Because people may have different preferences.

Explain that secrecy is a legal right and responsibility of every citizen. When you vote, you have the right to keep your vote
confidential. No one may see you cast your vote, not even the election commission staff, polling agent, or another voter. It is only if a
voter has a disability such as weak eyesight or a physical problem that can prevent you from stamping the ballot paper that you may
seek assistance. Otherwise, any other presence would be considered illegal. Lack of ability to read or write does not justify any kind of
assistance (since one does not need to read or write to understand the ballot paper). Show Picture 12 and explain the basic process of
balloting as follows: (i) Voter enters the polling station; (ii) Polling officer inspects National ID Card; marks thumb with indelible ink
and after calling the name and serial number of the voter, marks off her name from electoral list; (iii) The First Presiding Officer
issues a ballot paper for the national assembly. She stamps and signs it on the reverse side and marks the counterfoil; (iv) The Second
Presiding Officer issues ballot paper for provincial assembly. She stamps and signs it on the reverse side, and marks the counterfoil;
(v) Voter goes to the polling booth and stamps on both the ballot papers; (vi) Voter puts her ballot in the specified ballot boxes; (vii)
Voter leaves the polling station.

Tell the women that to keep voting confidential, all polling stations will be equipped with a Voter Screen. This screen will ensure that
no one sees you while stamping the ballot paper. Show Picture 13 and highlight that the Election Commission has undertaken special
arrangements to make voting easy for women – e.g. separate polling stations for women, female polling staff, and ensuring that
polling stations and polling booths are located in easy to reach places, e.g. nearby schools.

Show Picture 14 and explain the right procedure of balloting. Show how the ballot should be stamped and more importantly folded,
and then put in the appropriate ballot box i.e. green ballot paper into green ballot box and white ballot paper into the white ballot box.

Ask the women, how many of them have voted before? Ask them how they have felt after casting the vote? Some may say nervous or
afraid while others may say satisfied. Show Picture 15 and explain that as shown in the picture, once a voter comes out everyone is
interested in knowing whom she has voted for. Tell the women that this should not make them anxious or nervous. If they want, they
can make everyone happy!




                                                                    31
Appendix B: Visual Aids




Who is responsible for the situation shown in the picture?         Elected representatives make decisions about
                                                                   developmental activities.




Every Pakistanis vote is of equal importance; regardless           One vote casted results in selection of two members; one
whether the voter is rich or poor, male or female                  from National Assembly and other from Provincial
                                                                   Assembly. a. National assembly; b. Provincial assembly




Major responsibilities of members of the National                  Responsibilities of the members of provincial assembly
Assembly are:                                                      are to ensure:
a. Setting-up laws for the protection of women rights;             a. Provision of facilities such as girls & boys schools,
b. Establishing law for peace and stability in the country;        b. Health centers,
c. Relations with foreign countries and                            c. Irrigation and
d. Construction of major roads                                     d. Small and home based industries in their own areas


                                                              32
Characteristics of effective member are:                      Who are the candidates contesting elections from their
a. Interested to promote projects that will reduce            constituency?
poverty;
b. Well reputed,
c. Not misused national resources in the past;
d. Respected for their good character;
e. Has a positive attitude towards poor
f. Ability to understand problems;
g. Educated,




9. Getting information about the candidate from:              10. Pre-election, Post-election
a. Neighbors,
b. Male members within the family
c. Party workers
d. Teachers/respected members of the community




11. One has to choose the best from the lot available.



                                                         33
                                                                Separate Polling Arrangements for Women
12. The importance and confidentiality of the Voting            (from right to left)
Process                                                         1. Female Polling Agent
                                                                2. Separate Polling Space for Women
                                                                3. Male Polling Station
                                                                4. Female Polling Station




14. Stamp against the symbol/name of your chosen                15. Don’t be afraid after casting your vote!
political candidate and place the vote in the ballot box


Figure 1: Timeline



                      Feb 5 -15              Feb 18         Feb 18-19                    March 5-25




                     HH visits and           National       Voting
                     Pre-Election            Elections      Verification
                     Survey
                                                                                      Post-Election
                                                                                      Survey
                                                           34
Figure 2: Section of Village with geographical clusters




Notes: The solid white lines delimit a geographical cluster. A square represents the location of a T1 household, a star
represents a T2 household and a dot represents a control household in a control cluster. A triangle represents a control
household in a treated cluster (either T1 or T2).




                                                           35
                                                      Table 1: Summary Statistics
                                                                          N. Obs    Mean      St. Dev   Pct 10   Pct. 50   Pct. 90
Panel A: Polling Station Characteristics
  Number of women registered in each polling station                        21      434.0     196.7     195.0    464.0      656.0
  Number of treated women in each polling station                           21       89.0      54.2      34.0     82.0      150.0
  Share of treated women                                                    21       0.24      0.19      0.07     0.22       0.43
  Turnout for women                                                         21       0.58      0.27      0.30     0.54       0.91
  Turnout for men                                                           21       0.49      0.15      0.32     0.51       0.66
  Share of PPPP among female voters                                         21       0.62      0.26      0.39     0.66       0.88
  Share PPPP among male voters                                              21       0.63      0.25      0.33     0.67       0.93
  Percentage of women with access to cable in the polling station           21       0.34      0.26      0.06     0.23       0.75
  St. Dev of asset index                                                    21       1.76      0.30      1.46     1.72       2.09
  St. Dev of distance index                                                 21       0.79      0.52      0.16     0.69       1.31
Panel B: Household Characteristics
  Household size                                                           963       10.2      5.17       5         9        16
                                          1
   Number of women in the household                                        991       2.69      1.48       1         2         5
   Asset Index                                                             963       0.00      1.85     -2.03     -0.49     2.66
   Total owned land (in acres)                                             963       2.58      7.55      0.01      0.04     7.02
   Average monthly expenditure (in Rs. thousands)                          963       8.80      4.71      3.00      9.00     12.50
   House quality index                                                     963       0.00      1.38     -1.62     -0.32      1.97
   Low Zaat Status                                                         963       0.26      0.44       0         0         1

   Received visit from political party staff prior to election (1=Yes)     963       0.75      0.43       0         1         1
   Attended political rally before intervention (1=Yes)                    963       0.24      0.43       0         0         1

                                     1
  Distance to polling station (Km.)                                  991              0.97      0.91      0         1         2
  Distance between households within geographical cluster (meters) 8,263             194.2     283.9     27.9     107.1     456.5
  Distance between households within village (meters)              48,430           1,472.9   1,304.9   109.4    1,070.5   2,962.8
Panel C: Woman Characteristics
  Age                                                               2,637           37.76     16.09      20        35        60
  Woman has formal schooling (1=Yes)                                2,637            0.18      0.39       0         0         1
  Attended political rally before intervention (1=Yes)              2,637            0.80      0.40       0         1         1
  Number of children under 5 years old                              2,637            0.86      1.19       0         0         3
  Woman has a National Identity Card (NIC or CNIC) (1=Yes)          2,637            0.70      0.46       0         1         1
                                                  1
   Woman voted in last local elections (1=Yes)                            2,735      0.70      0.46       0         1         1
   Access to radio (1=Yes)                                                2,637      0.48      0.50       0         0         1
   Access to TV (1=Yes)                                                   2,637      0.70      0.46       0         1         1
   Access to cable (1=Yes)                                                2,637      0.30      0.46       0         0         1
   Mobility Index (0 to 3)                                                2,637      2.17      0.42       2         2         3
   Woman allowed to join an NGO (1=Yes)                                   2,637      0.73      0.44       0         1         1
                                              1
   Woman is a member of MRDO (1=Yes)                                      2,735      0.11      0.31       0         0         1
   Woman seeks advice from a religious leader or "Pir" (1=Yes)            2,637      0.64      0.48       0         1         1
       1
Notes: indicates that the variable is created using only the sample from the pre-election visit. Variables are defined in Appendix
Table A1.
                                                                       Table 2: Differences by treatment status


                                                                                                                                      Treated      Control households
                                                                                      Treatment 1 vs Treatment 2 vs  Treated        households vs in treated clusters
                                                                      Treatment vs        control        control    clusters vs     households in vs households in
                                                                   control households   households     households control clusters control clusters control clusters
                                                                           T-C             T1-C           T2-C         TN-CN            T-CN             CTN-CN
                                                                          (1)                (2)              (3)            (4)             (5)                (6)
Panel A: Household Characteristics
    Household size                                                       0.266              0.289            0.227         0.412            0.422              0.371
                                                                        (0.334)            (0.382)          (0.400)       (0.433)          (0.417)            (0.546)
                                            1
     Number of women in the household                                     0.096              0.11             0.088         0.054            0.074             -0.044
                                                                        (0.104)            (0.123)          (0.114)       (0.145)          (0.139)            (0.165)
     Asset index                                                          0.017              0.061           -0.036        -0.086           -0.063             -0.188
                                                                        (0.132)            (0.146)          (0.181)       (0.204)          (0.202)            (0.195)
     Total owned land (in acres)                                        1.018**            1.360**             0.6         0.754             0.943              -0.16
                                                                        (0.428)            (0.528)          (0.512)       (0.543)          (0.572)            (0.388)
     Average monthly expenditure                                        473.211            470.616          444.17        267.484          367.439           -297.676
                                                                       (403.795)          (441.530)        (440.550)     (591.398)        (608.246)         (510.030)
     House quality index                                                 -0.054             -0.078           -0.023       -0.211*           -0.192          -0.314**
                                                                        (0.098)            (0.121)          (0.117)       (0.117)          (0.117)            (0.138)
     Distance to polling station (Km)                                    -0.013             -0.036           0.011         0.137            0.108             0.277*
                                                                        (0.081)            (0.082)          (0.115)       (0.137)          (0.129)            (0.162)
     Low Zaat status                                                     0.026              0.014            0.034         0.063            0.061              0.086
                                                                        (0.059)            (0.070)          (0.067)       (0.101)          (0.099)            (0.069)
     Received visit from political party staff prior to election
     (1=Yes)                                                             0.000              0.002            -0.002        -0.007           -0.006           -0.015*
                                                                        (0.007)            (0.010)          (0.008)       (0.010)          (0.010)           (0.009)
     Attended political rally before intervention (1=Yes)                0.032              0.003           0.070*          0.050            0.051            0.043
                                                                        (0.034)            (0.036)          (0.040)       (0.044)          (0.045)           (0.049)

    N. Observations                                                       972                676              588           972              845               292
    P-value F test joint significance                                    0.340              0.635            0.971         0.799            0.754             0.466
Panel B: Woman Characteristics
    Age                                                                  -0.730             -0.872           -0.674      -1.410**         -1.382**           -1.533**
                                                                        (0.167)            (0.139)          (0.272)       (0.028)          (0.034)            (0.033)
     Woman has formal schooling (1=Yes)                                   0.007             -0.002           0.025          0.015            0.016              0.020
                                                                        (0.723)            (0.915)          (0.274)       (0.616)          (0.587)            (0.596)
     Woman is married (1=Yes)                                            -0.007             -0.020           0.005         -0.017           -0.016             -0.019
                                                                        (0.641)            (0.229)          (0.802)       (0.243)          (0.295)            (0.416)
     Number of children under 5 years old                               0.088*             0.114**           0.048       0.147***         0.150***             0.137
                                                                        (0.061)            (0.042)          (0.415)       (0.004)          (0.002)            (0.104)
     Woman has a National Identity Card (NIC or CNIC) (1=Yes              0.027              0.021            0.033         0.042            0.043              0.035
                                                                        (0.292)            (0.505)          (0.180)       (0.228)          (0.216)            (0.274)
                                                    1
     Woman voted in last local elections (1=Yes)                          0.022              0.002          0.042*          0.036            0.037              0.034
                                                                        (0.333)            (0.942)          (0.095)       (0.232)          (0.223)            (0.307)
     Access to radio (1=Yes)                                              0.011              0.032           -0.014        -0.014           -0.008             -0.045
                                                                        (0.728)            (0.362)          (0.722)       (0.757)          (0.854)            (0.324)
     Access to TV (1=Yes)                                                 0.022              0.041            0.000         0.026            0.028              0.028
                                                                        (0.522)            (0.247)          (0.997)       (0.630)          (0.598)            (0.598)
     Access to cable (1=yes)                                             -0.059             -0.064           -0.045       -0.118*          -0.116*           -0.116**
                                                                        (0.175)            (0.204)          (0.365)       (0.079)          (0.080)            (0.028)
     Mobility Index (0 to 3)                                              0.032             0.055             0.005         0.012            0.020             -0.034
                                                                        (0.456)            (0.214)          (0.920)       (0.826)          (0.710)            (0.665)
     Woman allowed to join an NGO (1=Yes)                                -0.003             0.008            -0.020        -0.022           -0.019             -0.033
                                                                        (0.915)            (0.762)          (0.534)       (0.506)          (0.573)            (0.363)
                                                1
     Woman is a member of MRDO (1=Yes)                                   -0.004             0.018            -0.029        0.030            0.023              0.072
                                                                        (0.870)            (0.531)          (0.371)       (0.410)          (0.508)            (0.105)
     Woman seeks advice from a religious leader or "Pir" (1=Y            -0.051             -0.031          -0.079*        -0.057           -0.062             -0.043
                                                                        (0.129)            (0.424)          (0.066)       (0.246)          (0.214)            (0.414)

    N. Observations                                                  2,637               1,827            1,577            2,637            2,303               768
    P-value F test of joint significance                             0.294               0.057            0.440            0.401            0.305              0.001
Notes: T refers to the sample of treated households, C control households, CTN control households in treated clusters, TN households in treated clusters (including both
                                                                                                   1
treated and control households) and CN households in control clusters (all are control households). indicates that the variable is created using only the sample from the
pre-election visit. Variables are defined in Appendix Table A1.
                                      Table 3: Effect on Female Turnout


                                                                                           Control
                                                                                           households
                                                                               Treated     in treated
                                                                   Treated     household clusters vs
                                                       Treatment clusters vs s only vs households
                                                       vs control control      control     in control
                                                       households clusters     clusters    clusters
                                                               T-C       TN-CN        T-CN        CTN-CN
                                                               (1)          (2)        (3)           (4)
Panel A: Treatment
    Treatment (T)                                             0.06       0.118     0.120*        0.121*
                                                           (0.045)     (0.073)     (0.071)       (0.062)
    R-squared                                                 0.18         0.19       0.19         0.21
Panel B: T1 vs T2
    Importance of voting (T1)                                0.034        0.095     0.094         0.109
                                                           (0.052)     (0.077)     (0.075)       (0.070)
    Importance of voting and secret balloting (T2)         0.093*       0.145*    0.152**        0.135*
                                                           (0.048)     (0.077)     (0.074)       (0.079)
    R-squared                                                 0.18         0.19        0.2         0.21
N. Observations                                              2,637        2,637     2,304          767
Mean dependent variable among CN                              0.52         0.52       0.52         0.52
P-value (T1 = T2)                                            0.223        0.308     0.229         0.752
P-value (F-test for joint significance of T1 and T2)         0.146        0.159     0.106         0.152
Note: The dependent variable takes the value 1 if a woman reports having voted in the February 2008
elections and had a verifiable ink mark on her thumb. The symbols *, **, *** represent significance at
the 10, 5 and 1 percent respectively. All specifications include village fixed effects and the following
controls: number of registered female voters, whether woman has a NIC or CNIC, level of schooling,
age, zaat status, TV access, number of children between 0-5, total land owned, index of mobility and
whether woman seeks advise from "Pir". Standard errors are reported in parentheses below the
coefficient and are clustered at the geographic cluster level.
                                 Table 4: Spillover Effects using distance - I
                                                                    75m            100m                200m
                                                                     (1)             (2)                 (3)
Panel A: Treatment
    Treatment (T)                                                0.122*          0.153**              0.119*
                                                                 (0.065)          (0.074)             (0.070)
     Control with T within radius (CT)                           0.105*           0.133*                0.072
                                                                 (0.060)          (0.071)             (0.064)
     Number of households within radius                            0.006          0.006*             0.004**
                                                                 (0.004)          (0.003)             (0.002)
R-squared                                                           0.19             0.19                0.23
P-Value (T=CT)                                                     0.612           0.549                0.192
Panel B: T1 vs T2
     Importance of voting (T1)                                     0.092          0.132*                 0.12
                                                                 (0.066)          (0.070)             (0.078)
     Importance of voting and secret balloting (T2)             0.146**          0.182**             0.167**
                                                                 (0.063)          (0.069)             (0.075)
     Control with T1 within radius (CT1)                           0.045           0.066               -0.004
                                                                 (0.054)          (0.058)             (0.060)
     Control with T2 within radius (CT2)                         0.114*          0.149**              0.151*
                                                                 (0.064)          (0.071)             (0.086)
     Number of households within radius                            0.005          0.005*              0.003*
                                                                 (0.004)          (0.003)             (0.002)
R-squared                                                          0.191             0.20                0.20
P-value (T1 = CT1)                                                 0.461            0.350               0.148
P-value (T2 = CT2)                                                 0.418           0.472                0.764
P-value (T1 = T2)                                                  0.245           0.285                0.322
P-value (CT1 = CT2)                                                0.425           0.392                0.211
N. Observations                                                    2,637           2,637                2,637
Mean dependent variable among CN                                    0.58            0.58                 0.58

Note: The dependent variable takes the value 1 if a woman reports having voted in the February 2008
elections and had a verifiable ink mark on her thumb. The symbols *, **, *** represent significance at
the 10, 5 and 1 % respectively. All specifications include village fixed effects and the following controls:
number of registered female voters, whether woman has a NIC or CNIC, level of schooling, age, zaat
status, TV access, number of children between 0-5, total land owned, index of mobility and whether
woman seeks advise from "Pir". Standard errors are reported in parentheses below the coefficient and
are clustered at the geographic cluster level.
Table 5: Spillover Effects using distance - II

                                                                  Mean       Median       Coefficients
                                                                    (1)         (2)           (3)
Treatment (T)                                                                                0.037
                                                                                            [0.031]
Number of treated women within 0-200 radius                        40.40       35.00       0.007***
                                                                                            [0.001]
Number of treated women within 200-400 radius                      20.47       16.00       0.009***
                                                                                            [0.002]
Number of treated women within 400-600 radius                      11.91       4.00        0.007***
                                                                                            [0.002]
Number of treated women within 600-800 radius                      15.50       6.00         0.005**
                                                                                            [0.002]
Number of treated women within 800-1000 radius                     11.08       1.00          0.005*
                                                                                            [0.003]
Number of treated women within 1000-1,200 radius                   7.88        0.00          0.002
                                                                                            [0.003]
Number of women within 0-200 radius                                56.78       47.00        -0.002**
                                                                                            [0.001]
Number of women within 200-400 radius                              29.84       24.00       -0.004***
                                                                                            [0.001]
Number of women within 400-600 radius                              18.33       7.00        -0.005***
                                                                                            [0.001]
Number of women within 600-800 radius                              21.28       8.00         -0.003*
                                                                                            [0.002]
Number of women within 800-1000 radius                             15.81       4.00         -0.004*
                                                                                            [0.002]
Number of women within 1000-1,200 radius                           11.50       0.00          0.000
                                                                                            [0.002]
Observations                                                                                 2,637
R-squared                                                                                    0.234
Note: The dependent variable takes the value 1 if a woman reports having voted in the February
2008 elections and had a verifiable ink mark on her thumb. In column 1, the mean of each variable is
reported. Column 2 reports the coefficient along with the standard errors in parentheses below the
coefficient, clustered at the gepgraphic cluster level. The symbols *, **, *** represent significance at
the 10, 5 and 1 % respectively. All specifications include village fixed effects and the following
controls: number of registered female voters, whether woman has a NIC or CNIC, level of schooling,
age, zaat status, TV access, number of children between 0-5, total land owned, index of mobility and
whether woman seeks advise from "Pir".
Table 6: Spillovers at the Polling Station Level

                                                           Women                 Men
                                                   (1)       (2)       (3)        (4)
Panel A: Turnout
Share of Treated Women                             0.864*** 0.991***   -0.044     -0.149
                                                   [0.259] [0.240]     [0.187]    [0.183]

R-squared                                          0.370     0.601     0.003      0.247
Mean of Dependent Variable                         0.584     0.584     0.487      0.487
Panel B: Share of PPPP
Share of Treated Women                             -0.614** -0.611*    -0.335     -0.372
                                                   (0.277) (0.314)     (0.326)    (0.290)

R-squared                                          0.205     0.237     0.127      0.080
Mean of Dependent Variable                         0.621     0.623     0.630      0.630
Polling Station Controls                           No        Yes       No         Yes
N. Observations                                    21        21        21         21

Note: The dependent variable in Panel A is the share of valid votes cast by women
(columns 1-2) and men (columns 3-4) over the total number of registered women/men. In
Panel B, the dependent variable is the share of votes obtained by PPPP over the total
number of valid votes. 'Share of treated women' is calculated by dividing the total number
of women treated, in a polling station, by the number of registered women in the polling
station. The symbols *, **, *** represent significance at the 10, 5 and 1 % respectively.
Robust standard errors in parentheses.
                                         Table 7: Effect on Female PPPP Vote


                                                                                                  Control
                                                                                                  households
                                                                                    Treated       in treated
                                                                      Treated       households    clusters vs
                                                       Treatment vs   clusters vs   only vs       households
                                                       control        control       control       in control
                                                       households     clusters      clusters      clusters
                                                       T-C            TN-CN         T-CN          CTN-CN
                                                       (1)            (2)           (3)           (4)
Panel A: Treatment
   Treatment (T)                                       -0.056         -0.157***     -0.146***     -0.218***
                                                       [0.041]        [0.052]       [0.047]       [0.077]

   R-squared                                           0.166          0.175         0.196         0.285
Panel B: T1 vs T2
    Importance of voting (T1)                          -0.023         -0.130*       -0.114*       -0.202**
                                                       [0.052]        [0.069]       [0.065]       [0.091]
    Importance of voting and secret balloting (T2)     -0.093         -0.190***     -0.183***     -0.246***
                                                       [0.057]        [0.057]       [0.055]       [0.090]

    R-squared                                          0.171          0.179         0.201         0.286
N. Observations                                        1,133          1,133         974           299
Mean dependent variable among CN                       0.950          0.950         0.950         0.950
P-value (T1 = T2)                                      0.328          0.403         0.346         0.652
P-value (F-test for joint significance of T1 and T2)   0.264          0.005         0.004         0.017

Note: The dependent variable takes the value 1 if a woman reports having voted for PPPP in the February
2008 elections and was verified as having voted. The symbols *, **, *** represent significance at the 10, 5
and 1 percent respectively. All specifications include village fixed effects and the following controls: number
of registered female voters, whether woman has a NIC or CNIC, level of schooling, age, zaat status, TV access,
number of children between 0-5, total land owned, index of mobility and whether woman seeks advise from
"Pir". Standard errors are reported in parentheses below the coefficient and are clustered at the geographic
cluster level.
           Table 8: Effect on Candidate Choice Using Cross Reports from Family Members
                                                                                           Control
                                                                            Treated    households
                                                              Treated    households     in treated
                                                           clusters vs       only vs    clusters vs
                                                               control       control        control
                                                              clusters      clusters       clusters
                                                                TN-CN          T-CN          CTN-CN
                                                                   (1)           (2)            (3)
Panel A: Treatment
Treatment (T)                                                  -0.007         -0.015         0.024
                                                               (0.023)       (0.025)        (0.025)
Man reporting about woman                                      -0.012         -0.010        -0.021
                                                               (0.019)       (0.019)        (0.020)
Man reporting x T                                           -0.085***      -0.082***       -0.104*
                                                               (0.027)       (0.028)        (0.054)

R-Squared                                                       0.065         0.069          0.125
Panel B: T1 vs T2
Importance of voting (T1)                                      -0.016         -0.026         0.012
                                                               (0.026)       (0.028)        (0.025)
Importance of voting and secret balloting (T2)                  0.002         -0.003         0.024
                                                               (0.027)       (0.030)        (0.029)
Man reporting about woman                                      -0.012         -0.010        -0.021
                                                               (0.019)       (0.019)        (0.020)
Man reporting x T1                                            -0.064*        -0.072*        -0.025
                                                               (0.037)       (0.039)        (0.040)
Man reporting x T2                                          -0.107***       -0.093**      -0.189**
                                                               (0.032)       (0.035)        (0.084)
R-squared                                                       0.064         0.070          0.126
N. Observations                                                 3,713          3,200           914
Mean dependent variable among CN                                0.983         0.983          0.983
P-value (T1=T2)                                                 0.475         0.431          0.688
P-value (Male Report x T1=Male Report x T2)                     0.313         0.659          0.067
Note: The dependent variable takes the value 1 if a woman's self-report about candidate choice
matches the report of the reportee, either another woman in the household or the male head.
Each observation is therefore a pair with several observations for each woman. If a reporter
believes that a woman did not vote or does not know whom she voted for, the dependent variable
is coded as missing. All specifications include village fixed effects and the following controls:
number of registered female voters, whether reportee has a NIC or CNIC, level of schooling, age,
zaat status, TV access, number of children between 0-5, total land owned, index of mobility and
whether woman seeks advise from a "Pir". Standard errors are reported in parentheses below the
coefficient and are clustered at the geographic cluster level. The symbols *, **, *** represent
significance at the 10, 5 and 1 % respectively.
                                            Table 9: Effect on Knowledge and Perceptions
                                                                                   Woman        Woman         Woman
                                                              Index of             checked      believes    witnessed or
                                                             knowledge Index of    voter list   elections   heard about
                                                             of current opinion on   after    were free and violence in
                                                      N. Obs   events democracy intervention       fair        village
                                                        (1)      (2)        (3)       (4)          (5)           (6)

Treated clusters vs control clusters (TN-CN)          2637       0.005       0.066         0.051*      0.070**       -0.104**
                                                                (0.072)     [0.041]        (0.030)     (0.034)        (0.044)
Treated households only vs control clusters (T-CN)    2304       0.012       0.069         0.053*      0.075**       -0.101**
                                                                (0.070)     [0.042]        (0.031)     (0.033)        (0.042)
Control households in treated clusters vs              767       -0.025      0.046          0.048       0.060        -0.122**
households in control clusters (CTN-CN)                         (0.094)     [0.052]        (0.035)     (0.037)        (0.049)

Mean dependent variable among CN                                 0.00        -0.03          0.61         0.88           0.27
Note: The symbols *, **, *** represent significance at the 10, 5 and 1 % respectively. All specifications include village fixed
effects and the following controls: number of registered female voters, whether woman has a NIC or CNIC, level of schooling,
age, zaat status, TV access, number of children between 0-5, total land owned, index of mobility and whether woman seeks
advise from "Pir". Standard errors are reported in parentheses below the coefficient and are clustered at the geographic cluster
level. Variables are defined in Appendix Table A1.
                                                                                   Table A1. Definition of Variables
Variable                                      Definition
Polling Station Characteristics
    Share Valid Votes                         Share of valid votes cast by women (columns 1-2) and men (3-4)
    Share PPP                                  Share of votes obtained by PPPP over the total number of valid votes
    Share of treated women                    calculated by dividing the total number of women treated, in a polling station, by the number of registered women in the polling station.
    St. Dev of asset index                    Standard Deviation of household asset Index
   St. Dev of distance to polling station     Standard deviation of distance to polling station
   Pct. of Women with Access to Cable TV      Percentage of Women with Access to Cable TV
Household Characteristics
   Household size                             Total number of individuals in the household including children
                                              The first component of a PCAincluding the number of refrigerators, freezers, fans, geysers, washing machines/dryers, cooking stoves, TVs, VCRs, VCPs/ CD
   Asset Index                                players, Radios/ cassette players, sewing/knitting machines, dish antennas, cable services, bicycles, motorcycles, cows, buffalos and goats, as well as a
                                              dummy variable that takes value 1 if household owned any major agricultural assets/ machinery.
   Total owned land (in acres)                Total acres of owned land by the household
                                              Average monthly expenditure computed using the mid point of the following options: less than 2,000, greater than 2,000 but less than 4,000, greater than
   Average monthly expenditure (in
                                              4,000 but less than 6,000, greater than 6,000 but less than 8,000, greater than 8,000 but less than 10,000, greater than 10,000 but less than 15,000, greater
   thousands)
                                              than 15,000 but less than 25,000, greater than 25,000 but less than 35,000.
                                              Index constructed using principal components analysis using number of rooms and dummy variables that take value 1 if house has pacca walls, a roof made
   House quality index                        of concrete, iron/brick/tile or wood/brick/tile, the toilet is flush connected to public sewerage, flush connected to pit or flush connected to open drain latrine
                                              and the main source of drinking water for the household is either piped water or hand pump.
  Distance to polling station (Km.)           Total distance in Km. from household to polling station.
  Low Zaat (Caste) Status                     Household belongs to service or menial zaat groups
Woman Characteristics
  Woman has formal schooling (1=Yes)          Dummy variable equal to 1 if woman has any formal schooling.
   Woman is married (1=Yes)                   Dummy variable equal to 1 if woman is married.
   Number of children under age 5             Number of children under 5 years old over total number of children that the woman has.
   Woman would be allowed to join a NGO
                                              Dummy variable equal to 1 if woman would be allowed to get involved in an NGO if one were to start working in their village.
   (1=Yes)
   Has a NIC (1=Yes)                          Dummy variable equal to 1 if the woman has a national identity card
   Access to radio (1=Yes)                    Dummy variable equal to 1 if woman has access to a radio.
   Access to TV (1=Yes)                       Dummy variable equal to 1 if woman has access to TV.
   Access to cable (1=Yes)                    Dummy variable equal to 1 if woman has access to cable.
   Hours of Radio in an average week          The product of number of hours of radio listened in an average day times number of days respondent listens to the radio in an average week.
   Gets World new from BBC's Urdu Service     Dummy variable equal to 1 if respondent reported turning to BBC radio first for getting world news
   Number of hrs of TV watched in avg week    The product of number of hours of TV watched in an average day times number of days respondent watches TV in an average week
                                              Index based on questions about whether woman would be allowed to go to bazaars , doctors or for social visits outside her village and her settlement. 1= No
   Mobility Index
                                              to all three; 2=accompanied by adult male and 3= Accompanied by adult female, children or alone. The index is the sum of responses divided by 3
   MRDO membership (1=Yes)                    Dummy variable equal to 1 if woman is a member of a community organization in her village.
                                              Index constructed using prinicipal components analysis of 3 questions on methods tried to resolve different situations for both men and women(election
   Index of community action taken
                                              officials left name off voter list, police wrongly arrested someone in family, someone wrongly seized family's land). The 3 questions were recoded to 1 if
                                              Index constructed by adding 1 (0 otherwise) if the answers is YES to following questions whether during the past year he/she contacted a local government
   Index of contact with formal authority
                                              councilor (Nazim, Naib Nazim) and contacted a political party official. The total is divided by 2.
                                              Index constructed by adding 1 (0 otherwise) if the answers is YES to following questions whether during the past year he/she contacted a religious leader
   Index of contact with informal authority
                                              (Pir, Murshid) and contacted a traditional ruler (Wadera, Maalik, Numberdar). The total is divided by 2.
                                                                              Table A1. Definition of Variables (cont.)
Variable                                    Definition
Knowledge of current events and the political process
   Aware of imposition of Emergency Rule Dummy variable equal to 1 if respondent had heard about the imposition of the emergency rule, the removal of Chief Justice of the Supreme Court and the
   (1=Yes)                                  house arrest of various lawyers.
                                            Average score of the following knowledge questions: "Aware of imposition of emergency/house arrest of lawyers and removal of Chief Justice" and "Knows
   Index of knowledge of current events
                                            name of newly elected Prime Minister".
   Share of political party signs correctly
                                            Proportion of signs (outof 7) that respondent were able to correctly match to a political party contesting for a National Assembly seat.
   identified
   Share of political party names correctly
                                            Proportion of party's names contesting for National Assembly that the respondent was able to recall perfectly out of 2.
   identified
   Recalls winning candidate (1=Yes)        Dummy variable equal to 1 if woman perfectly recalled the name of the candidate that won the National Assembly seat in her constituency
   Recalls names of main candidates (1=Yes) Dummy variable equal to 1 if woman perfectly recalled the names of the candidates from the two main parties that contested a National Assembly seat
   Knows the gender of main candidates
                                             Dummy variable equal to 1 if woman perfectly identified the gender of the candidates from the two main parties that contested a National Assembly seat
   (1=Yes)
Voting behavior and perceptions
   Checked voter list after February 5th
                                             Dummy variable equal to 1 if after February 5th woman or a family member checked to see if she was on the voter list.
   (1=Yes)
   Voted in last elections (local) (1=Yes)   Dummy variable equal to 1 if woman voted in the last local body elections.
   Voted in Feb 08 (1=Yes)                   Dummy variable equal to 1 if respondent voted in this national elections.
   Witnessed or heard of any type of
                                             Dummy variable equal to 1 if woman personally witnessed or heard of any type of violence in/near her village.
   violence in/near village (1=Yes)
                                             Dummy variable equal to 1 if woman believes that the national elections held in February 18th 2008 were "Completely free and fair" or "Free and fair, but
   Elections were free and fair (1=Yes)
                                             with minor problems" instead of "Free and fair but with minor problems" and "Not free and fair".
                                             Disagreement with the following statement: "Only educated should vote" and average disapproval of the following forms of government: "Only one party is
   Index of opinion on democracy
                                             allowed to stand for election and hold office. ", "The army comes in to govern the country", "There are no elections, no MPA or MNA and the president
Recall of Intervention
                                              Dummy variable equal to 1 if woman confirmed in the follow-up survey that she was visited before the elections to tell her about the importance of the
   Visit before elections (1=Yes)
                                              elections and voting.
                                              Dummy variable equal to 1 if woman confirmed in the follow-up survey that she was present in the visit before the elections to tell her about the importance
   Present in visit before elections (1=Yes)
                                              of the elections and voting.
   Attend presentation in a neighbor's        Dummy variable equal to 1 if woman confirmed in the follow-up survey that she was present in the visit that took place in a neighbor's house before the
   house (1=Yes)                              elections to tell them about the importance of the elections and voting.
                                              Dummy variable equal to 1 if woman confirmed in the follow-up survey that some neighbors were present in the visit that took place at her house before the
   Neighbors joined during visit (1=Yes)
                                              elections to tell them about the importance of the elections and voting.
   Issues raised: importance of voting        Dummy variable equal to 1 if woman confirmed in the follow-up survey that the issue raised during the visit before the elections was about the importance
   (1=Yes)                                    of voting.
   Issues raised: importance of secret voting Dummy variable equal to 1 if woman confirmed in the follow-up survey that the issue raised during the visit before the elections was about the importance
   (1=Yes)                                    of voting secrecy.
   Issues raised: importance of voting and Dummy variable equal to 1 if woman confirmed in the follow-up survey that the issues raised during the visit before the elections were the importance of
   secrecy (1=Yes)                            voting and importance of voting secrecy.
                                              Dummy variable equal to 1 if woman confirmed in the follow-up survey that she talked about the visit and the issues raised during the visit with others in her
   Talked about visit (1=Yes)
                                              neighborhood.
   Neighbor talked about meeting to           Dummy variable equal to 1 if woman confirmed in the follow-up survey that some women from her neighborhood talk to her about the meeting which she
   woman (1=Yes)                              had attended in the days preceding the election.
                                       Table A2. Gender Differences
                                                                                   Means           P-value
                                                                N. Obs                            of t-test
                                                                          Female       Male
                                                                                                  of (2)-(3)
                                                                  (1)       (2)            (3)        (4)
Panel A: Access to Media
   Access to Radio (1=Yes)                                      1,923       0.47           0.42    0.061
   Number of hours of radio listened to in an average week       852        9.7            9.63    0.867
   Access to TV (1=Yes)                                         1,923       0.67       0.629       0.103
   Number of hours of TV watched in an average week             1,222       15.3        11.0       0.000
   Access to cable TV (1=Yes)                                   1,923       0.29        0.23       0.008
   Listens to BBC's urdu service for world news (1=Yes)          852        0.10        0.48       0.000
Panel B: Knowledge of Political Parties and Elections
   Share of political party signs correctly identified          1,923       0.28           0.42    0.000
   Share of political party names correctly identified          1,923       0.86           0.96    0.000

   Knows the gender of main candidates (1=Yes)                  1,923       0.95           0.98    0.483
   Recalls names of main candidates (1=Yes)                     1,923       0.82           0.86    0.488
   Recalls winning candidate (1=Yes)                            1,923       0.90           0.95    0.219
   Aware of Emergency Rule (1=Yes)                              1,923       0.10           0.51    0.000
Panel C: Participation in Public Life
   Attends community meetings (1=Yes)                           1,923       0.18           0.52    0.000
   Attends demonstrations (1=Yes)                               1,923       0.12           0.23    0.000
   Attended political rally before intervention (1=Yes)         1,923       0.05           0.24    0.000
   Takes action
         If name missing in voter list (1=Yes)                  1,923       0.76           0.92    0.000
         If police mistakenly arrest family member (1=Yes)      1,923       0.93           0.98    0.000
         If family land is seized (1=Yes)                       1,923       0.92           0.98    0.000
    Index of community action taken                             1,923      -0.29           0.69    0.000

    Contacts local councilor (1=Yes)                            1,923       0.25           0.37    0.000
    Contacts a local political party official (1=Yes)           1,923
                                                                 ,          0.22           0.38    0.000
    Index of formal authority contact                           1,923      -0.10           0.34    0.000
    Contacts a religious leader (1=Yes)                         1,923       0.66           0.49    0.000
    Contacts a traditional ruler (1=Yes)                        1,923       0.45           0.32    0.000
    Index of informal authority contact                          1,921      0.12       -0.30      0.000
Note: Data come from follow-up survey. Male refers to head of household while female to their
spouse. P-values were calculated from a regressions of each variable on a gender dummy. The
regression included village fixed effects and standard errors were clustered at the geographical cluster
level.
                                      Table A3. Attrition
                                                      Women Level           Household Level
Panel A: Treatment                                        (1)      (2)           (3)        (4)
Treatment (T)                                         -0.004   -0.003          0.01      0.011
                                                     (0.010)  (0.011)       (0.009)    (0.010)
Baseline Contols?                                          N         Y            N           Y
R-squared                                               0.02     0.02          0.00       0.00
Panel B: T1 vs T2
Importance of voting (T1)                            -0.022      -0.022      -0.004      -0.004
                                                     (0.012)     (0.012)    (0.011)     (0.011)
Importance of voting and secret balloting (T2)        0.020       0.021      0.029*    0.030**
                                                     (0.013)     (0.017)    (0.014)     (0.015)
Baseline Contols?                                          N           Y          N           Y
R-squared                                               0.03        0.03       0.01        0.01
Mean dependent variable                                0.035       0.035      0.026       0.026
Observations                                          2,734       2,734      1,019       1,019

Note: Regressions (1) and (2) are at the women level and (3) to (4) are at the household level.
In the latter the controls take the average value of the women within a household. The
dependant variable takes the value 1 if woman attrited. All regressions include village fixed
effects and the following control variables collected during pre-election visit are included
when noted: Woman has NIC or CNIC, voted in last elections, woman is a member of MRDO
and the number of females in the household. Standard errors are reported in parenthesis
below the coefficients and are clustered at the geographical cluster level. The symbols *, **,
*** represent significance at the 10, 5 and 1 % respectively.
                                Table A4. Information about intervention and about political discussions
                                                                                                                                C in
                                                                                                                  C in   C in control
                                                                   N. Obs    All     T     T1      T2      C in T T1     T2 clusters
                                                                     (1)     (2)    (3)    (4)    (5)       (6)    (7)   (8)    (9)
Panel A: Information about visit
   Received visit before elections (1=Yes)                          2,637   0.71   1.00   1.00   1.00      0.00   0.00   0.00   0.00
   Neighbors joined during visit (1=Yes)                            1,867   0.11   0.11   0.08   0.15        --    --     --     --
   Issues raised during visit
      Importance of voting                                          1,867   0.64   0.64   0.98   0.19       --     --     --     --
      Importance of voting in accordance to own preferences         1,867   0.06   0.06   0.02   0.12       --     --     --     --
      Both                                                          1,867   0.30   0.30   0.01   0.69       --     --     --     --
   Discussed visit with neighbors (1=Yes)                           1,867   0.41   0.41   0.35   0.50       --     --     --     --
Panel B: Information about political discussions
   Discuss political issues with women in neighborhood (1=Yes) 2,637        0.44   0.55   0.50   0.62      0.40   0.30   0.51   0.18
   Issues raised during conversations
      Party/Candidate Positions                                      847    0.61   0.62   0.61   0.63      0.59   0.58   0.61   0.59
      Importance of voting                                           847    0.86   0.85   0.85   0.86      0.86   0.89   0.83   0.88
      Importance of voting in accordance to own preferences          847    0.52   0.53   0.53   0.53      0.47   0.49   0.45   0.51

Notes: Data come from follow-up survey. Column (1) refers to the number of observations for column (2). Columns (3) -(5) report
data for treated women. Columns (6)-(8) report data for control women in treated clusters. Column (9) reports data for control
women in control clusters.
                                   Table A5: Impact on Women's Participation and Candidate Choice
                                                      All Women              Not voted in the past           Voted in the past
                                                                      P-
                                                                  value
                                                                   of t-                      P-value                      P-value
                                                                test (1)-                    of t-test                    of t-test
                                                      T      CN      (2)         T         CN (4)-(5)          T        CN (7)-(8)
                                                    (1)      (2)     (3)        (4)       (5)        (6)     (7)       (8)       (9)
Percentage of women who
    Voted for the same party as male head          44.6    41.7    0.500      13.5       11.6    0.326     57.25    56.94      0.950
    Voted for different party from head            10.1     2.8    0.010       2.2        1.4    0.647     13.15     3.47      0.000
    Voted but male head did not                     6.1     3.7    0.220       1.7        2.7    0.274      7.89     4.17      0.090
    Did not vote                                   38.6    50.9    0.010      82.0       84.2    0.526     21.04    34.03      0.010
     N. Observations                               1,870     434                539        146              1,331       288
Note: P-values are from regressions with village fixed effects, woman characteristics as controls and robust standard errors
clustered at the geographic cluster level. The symbols *, **, *** represent significance at the 10, 5 and 1 % respectively.