When 26-year-old Ayesha Gulalai was elected to Pakistan’s National Assembly in 2013, she became the country’s first tribal woman to be elected to parliament and one the country's youngest parliamentarians.
In early August 2017, Gulalai resigned from the political party she represented, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), and shared her reasons for doing so at a press conference. Among them were corruption, misogyny and the most damning of all—allegedly inappropriate text messages sent to her in October 2013 by the party's chairman, the cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan.
Khan is extremely popular, especially among younger voters, and Gulalai's very public
