islamabad - Down the centuries, education has been realised as playing a pivotal role in transforming the lives of human beings.
It not only raises the productivity and individual’s efficiency but also produce skilled manpower, which eventually is capable of paving a way towards sustainable economic development.
No doubt, education either academic or vocational proves to be an empowering tool for either gender, however, it carries an undeniable importance for women; providing them another chance at literacy that will enhance their income generating skills and help to secure their children’s bright future.
Furthermore, insufficient policy framework and gender inequality have also hindered economic advancement of women.
According to the reports, out of 781 million adults over the age of 15 years estimated to be illiterate, amongst them 496 million were women.
Educating girls, being a core issue requires a much-needed thinking and development processes, as it helps in poverty reduction by providing an access to economic opportunities. According to the Adolescent Girls Economic Empowerment report, there are a number of factors contributing to economic empowerment, though the most important ones are social support strategies, employment, financial and life skills.
With regard to the financial strategy, programmes offering vocational training and other employment opportunities should analyze a link between workforce development and employment strategies to match the required market needs and opportunities.
This initiative will provide quality training to girls. It can be argued that workforce development and employment strategies may hamper their goals. Whereas adolescent girls step into the workforce to backup their families financially, studies have revealed that they may prefer mobility, opportunities for friendships and volition coupled with their employment. Hence, safe employment opportunities may uplift their economic status and furnish future job prospects.
In spite of the undeniable benefits of investing in girls’ employment opportunities, the global economic crises have created barriers to youth employment. According to a research, the youth unemployment rate has increased since 2007 around the globe.
In addition, macroeconomics creates challenges for girls, which further add to the rate of unemployment for girls as compared to boys in almost every region of the world.
In the wake of the aforementioned challenges, vocational training can play a vital role in the employment of the girls. Vocational training develops business skill, entrepreneurship, and technical capacity. These skills are either demand oriented or developed on employers need to work in a specific field. Whereas, other vocational training programs focus on developing skills such as communication, interpersonal skills, and team management, are helping them to be suitable for a variety of jobs. It must be noted that the success rate of a vocational training program chiefly depends upon its ability to target and helping adolescent girls to develop technical and business skills required by the employer. Research has depicted that higher number of placements are offered to graduates of vocational training programmes in the market by the corporate partners and other interested firms.
It’s worth mentioning that women economic empowerment does not only rely upon employment opportunities, however, also depends on providing a secure environment and community support enabling them to enter into a workplace.
Legislators and the executive must also ensure to develop and implement policies safeguarding the rights of women in the course of their employment.
–The writer is an LLB (Hons) student in International Islamic University.