Crossed my mind, but ruled it out: Political ambition and gender in the Pakistani Lawyers’ Movement 2007–2009

Exploration of gender and political ambition is a crucial endeavor in liberal democracies like the United States and in electoral democracies with unstable political rights and civil liberties. We use a mixed-methods approach to conduct a political ambition survey of participants in the 2007–2009 Pakistani Lawyers’ Movement. We tested eight hypotheses about gender and participation in the movement, whether participants considered running for office (nascent ambition), or have taken steps to run (expressive ambition). Contrary to US findings, among eligible males and females in Pakistan, our logit analysis shows that gender is not significant in explaining nascent ambition among men and women. Running for office has equally crossed women’s minds because of female executive role models and women’s reserved parliamentary seats. However, elite Pakistani women have lower levels of expressive ambition owing to higher costs women face when challenging informal norms about political participation.