Mortara Research Seminar – A Conversation with Professor Sarah Khan

By Anna O’Sullivan (SFS ’28) —

On February 23rd, the Mortara Center for International Studies was pleased to welcome Professor Sarah Khan to present her research on gender and policing in Pakistan. The paper, titled “Putting Women’s Concerns on the Agenda: Evidence from Community Policing in Pakistan,” explores how women’s priorities can gain recognition within male-dominated bureaucratic institutions. The project is co-authored by Professor Ali Cheema of Lahore University of Management Sciences, Professor Ahsan Zia Farooqui of the University of Sussex, and Professor Jacob N. Shapiro of Princeton University. The paper was presented as part of the weekly Mortara Research Seminar, which provides a forum for scholars to share new research and receive feedback from Georgetown’s academic community.

Professor Sarah Khan, a scholar of gender and politics in South Asia, holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from Columbia University and studies gender gaps in political preferences as well as barriers to women’s participation in politics. Much of her research involves collaboration with civil society organizations and government institutions to evaluate policy impacts and produce actionable evidence. Her work has been published in leading journals such as the American Political Science Review and the Journal of Experimental Political Science.

The paper examines whether women’s concerns can be incorporated into bureaucratic priorities in male-dominated institutions, focusing on police responsiveness to women in Pakistan. In many gender-unequal contexts, policing priorities tend to reflect men’s concerns because both police forces and participation in community forums are overwhelmingly male. As a result, issues such as gender-based violence are often absent from the policy agenda. To address this problem, the authors evaluate a community policing intervention using a randomized controlled trial that compares a standard model with a gender-inclusive version. In the inclusive model, women participate in women-only forums led by female officers, allowing them to raise concerns that are later integrated into police planning.

The findings show that women rarely attend standard open forums but participate actively in women-only spaces, where they frequently raise concerns about gender-based violence. These concerns are incorporated into policing strategies developed jointly by male and female officers, and male officers who collaborate with female officers in planning become more likely to prioritize GBV even if they do not attend the women’s forums themselves. The study contributes thoughtfully to research on representative bureaucracy by showing that institutional design matters, as separate spaces for expressing concerns combined with integrated decision-making can help shift bureaucratic priorities.

The seminar concluded with a discussion among faculty and students about the implications of the study for institutional reform and gender equality in public sector organizations. The research highlights how carefully designed participatory mechanisms can reshape bureaucratic agendas even in highly unequal settings, offering new insights into how governments might better respond to women’s concerns.