IT is befuddling that consecutive chain of Pakistan’s leadership over the past many decades have expected Pakistan to economically rise while the best of the best of Pakistan, its women, comprising 52% of the population, are expected to contribute from the margins. It has been well documented in the world that women are the backbone of any economy. Globally, women’s labour force participation rate is 52.6% of their total labour force. However, in Pakistan, only 24% of women are part of the labour force, compared to over 80% of men. Agriculture continues to be the main sector for women’s employment. 67% of women are employed in agriculture (as compared to 27% of men).Most of the work performed by women is unpaid for the most part which includes seven million women working in agriculture who fall in the category of contributing family workers. And millions of women are further burdened by unpaid care work and spend nearly 10 times more hours than men in caring for home, family, elders and the ill. If this doesn’t seem right, it isn’t.
To draw further comparisons, it is notable that Thailand, Bangladesh and Pakistan have work forces split in equal percentages between agriculture (31, 36 and 36), industry (22, 22 and 25) and services (47, 41 and 38). However, the three countries Gender Gap ranking of 146 countries places Thailand at 74, Bangladesh at 71and Pakistan at 145. So, Pakistan is 145 out of 146 countries ranked, leading only Afghanistan. Why is this? There are a host of reasons. In Thailand and Bangladesh, the women are empowered through access to finance, positive cultural attitudes towards women at work, ease of transportation, equality in education and skills and engagement in targeted sector development initiatives focused towards women, etc. This has contributed to exponential GDP growth in Thailand and Bangladesh, while Pakistan continues to stand still. As a very wise friend of mine said one, in this fast paced world, standing still means going backwards. And that is exactly what is happening to Pakistan because while we stand still, others stream ahead.
To truly empower our women, there are many factors that need to be addressed. These include changing negative cultural attitudes, freedom from harassment and violence, equal participation in decision making (in both public and private sector), and proper access to justice, police, education and health. Equally importantly, we need to address the factors that uplift women in the women economic empowerment value chain, and this is the area that this article will focus on.
Too often seminars are held speaking to economic empowerment of women with panelists who are female civic society leaders, C-level women business person, women entrepreneurs with strong family backgrounds and with solid academic and financial support, etc. They present the issues faced by them from their prism. Their struggles are valid and worth remedial actions, but the question arises; do these women represent all the women of Pakistan? Obviously not. They represent a critical and important segment, but their problems do no translate to the millions of the other women of Pakistan. The only way to impact the depth and breadth of the women of Pakistan, we need to apply a value chain approach and identify women in all the categories of skills, education, occupation, and sectors. Subsequently, we need to decode what is required to be fixed in each category, assign targets to each category for the number of women to be empowered, and then devise strategies to make it happen. The result will look like the following.
The women empowerment value chain can be categorized women in at least six bands: 1) C-level women executives; 2) women owned small and medium enterprises; 3) self-employed women who are illiterate or semi-literate, and semi-skilled; 4) home based women who are highly skilled and educated; 5) women wage based employees with varying qualifications and skills; and 6) women qualified for international employment. Having established these, we can establish targets and purpose action to empower women in each of these categories.
In a subsequent article, I will address in detail the current scenario, and the proposed targets and solutions to create new jobs or increased incomes in current jobs for more than 10 million women of Pakistan within 10 years. This would lead to an increase of $100 billion in GDP. The details will rely on the deliberations of the Think Tank of the Awaam Pakistan Party which are being published as a “Green Paper on Women Development: The AP Reform Agenda”. The results are being presented at the University of Lahore on Saturday, 27th September, and all are encouraged to attend. It is not a political function. It is a function where any and all are invited to review the deliberations and offer critique and suggestions to help document a strategy to truly empower the women of Pakistan. It is hoped that a well thought out and successful model for true women empowerment will be adopted by the current leaderships of Pakistan at the federal and provincial level, because without empowered women, Pakistan will never rise to take its rightful place as a leader in the world.
—The writer is a former Senior Advisor to the Government.
