It is befuddling that successive chains 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 globally that women are the backbone of any economy. Worldwide, women’s labour force participation rate is 52.6% of the 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, which includes seven million women working in agriculture who fall into the category of contributing family workers. Millions of women are further burdened by unpaid care work, spending nearly 10 times more hours than men in caring for the 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 workforces split in similar percentages between agriculture (31, 36, and 36), industry (22, 22, and 25), and services (47, 41, and 38). However, the Gender Gap ranking of 146 countries places Thailand at 74, Bangladesh at 71, and Pakistan at 145, leading only Afghanistan. Why is this? There are a host of reasons. In Thailand and Bangladesh, 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 on 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 once said, 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, many factors need to be addressed. These include changing negative cultural attitudes, freedom from harassment and violence, equal participation in decision-making (in both the public and private sectors), and proper access to justice, police, education, and health. Equally importantly, we need to address the factors that uplift women in the women’s economic empowerment value chain, and this is the area that this article will focus on.

Too often, seminars are held discussing the economic empowerment of women with panellists who are female civil society leaders, C-level women businesspersons, women entrepreneurs with strong family backgrounds, and those with solid academic and financial support. They present the issues faced by them from their own prism. Their struggles are valid and worth addressing, 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 not translate to the millions of other women in Pakistan. The only way to impact the depth and breadth of the women of Pakistan is to apply a value chain approach, identify women in all categories of skills, education, occupations, and sectors, and then decode what is required to be fixed in each category. Assign targets to each category for the number of women to be empowered, and devise strategies to make it happen. The result would look like the following.

The women’s empowerment value chain can categorise women into 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. Once established, we can set targets and devise actions to empower women in each of these categories.

In a subsequent article, I will address in detail the current scenario, proposed targets, and solutions to create new jobs or increase incomes in current jobs for more than 10 million women in 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’s Development: The AP Reform Agenda.” The results will be presented at the University of Lahore on Saturday, 27th September, and all are encouraged to attend. It is not a political function; it is an event where anyone and everyone is 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’s empowerment will be adopted by the current leaderships of Pakistan at the federal and provincial levels, because without empowered women, Pakistan will never rise to take its rightful place as a leader in the world.

Imran Shauket
The writer is a former Senior Advisor to the Government and a sector development specialist. He is also a farmer and food processing practitioner.