Seminar Summary – The Inclusion Trap: Evidence from the Elite Civil Service
On April 9th, the Boston University Global Development Policy Center hosted Shaheen Naseer, a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Oxford, as a part of the Spring 2025 Human Capital Initiative (HCI) Seminar Series. She discussed her recent work on the unintended consequences of gender-sensitive reform and leadership pipelines in Pakistan’s civil service. Studying Pakistan’s 2000 civil service policy reform that relaxed mobility requirements for female officers, Naseer’s research aims to explore what happens when the rules become optional only for one group, what this means for both women’s preferences and whether the state begins reinterpreting a group’s choices through identity, not ability.
Pakistan’s elite civil service provides a prestigious opportunity for early-career workers to pursue jobs in government after passing an incredibly selective exam. Following two years of training, all officers were required to serve at posts outside of their home province. However, in 2000, a policy reform exempted women from this geographic mobility requirement. This out-of-province placement plays a critical role in providing civil servants with broader career networks as well as diverse work and administrative experience. Naseer’s research examines the impacts of this reform using data from 1986-2020, and specifically whether this policy created assumptions about and lowered expectations for female civil servants, leading to the exclusion of women from high-responsibility roles.
Naseer pulled data from government administrative records and paired this with career progression metrics from promotion records maintained by federal and provincial human resources (HR) departments (as well as nation-wide) Examination scores. She then investigated whether the 2000 policy impacted women’s mobility through stratified analyses, such as whether women civil servants from progressive versus conservative provinces or with differing initial ability scores had different outcomes. For longer-term consequences, Naseer studied whether the “quality” of postings differed by gender (whether the posting was situated within low-, medium- or high-responsibility ministries). She hypothesized that because women did not partake in career-boosting geographic mobility opportunities, they would be less likely to be assigned to high-responsibility roles. She found that there was a 27.5 percentage point drop in women’s high-responsibility postings post-2000 – a 30.7 percent decline from the pre-2000 baseline of 89.5 percent. Furthermore, women’s geographic exposure decreased by over 65 percent, and diversity in postings across provinces decreased by nearly 50 percent. This shows clear differences in promotional paths for men and women due to the reform, in which equally capable officers had differing probabilities of reaching high-responsibility roles; women’s decision to stay in-province was assumed to be a sign of lower suitability for high-responsibility roles.
Seminar participants were interested in learning more about various aspects of the civil service induction and mobility process. An audience member asked about whether higher-quality postings were correlated with higher salary, to which Naseer stated that it is not necessarily differences in salary that make these roles more desirable, but more privileges and benefits from the government. Naseer also responded to a comment about women’s behavior, stating that she has not found evidence that these changes are driven by women’s preferences. She clarified that the sample is not restricted to gender-based quotas; acceptance is highly competitive and wholly based on examination scores, making the process merit- and performance-based.
When asked what her policy recommendation would be following this study, Naseer responded that policymakers should design policies carefully. In the case of the 2000 reform, the impacts were much broader reaching than officials most likely intended, with effects on women’s mobility that will be difficult to reverse. This work is critical to understanding how policies can lead to system-wide shifts in status and career trajectories, reshaping pathways to leadership dependent on identity.
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