July 16, 2007	Monday	Jamadi-us-Sani 30, 1428

In the back-drop of social restrictions, which limit women’s contribution to economic progress, there is an urgent need to make a concerted effort to enhance investment in women’s education, especially for those living in rural areas.

There is a widespread consensus on the economic benefits of promoting education. Paul Krugman, a prospective Nobel laureate, proposed a ground-breaking thesis stating that the economy of a developing country lifts-off after it has accumulated a threshold level of human capital and that the continued growth is dependent upon resources devoted to education. South Korea and Taiwan are well-established case-studies of countries that achieved sustainable growth after they had attained high literacy.

Another example is China, a country which has experienced tremendous growth after the initiation of economic reforms by Chairman Den Xiaoping in 1978. Its economic growth has averaged nine per cent since 1990, attracting more than $55 billion per annum in foreign direct investment. Economists identify two reasons for China's miracle performance; world-class infrastructure coupled with an educated low-cost labour force.

Whilst China's higher-education system lags behind that of India, it has a superior primary and secondary education system and female literacy of 87 compared with 45 per cent for India. This provision of an army of educated workforce has given China a competitive advantage in basic manufacturing and is yet another example of how education of women contributes to economic progress.

Investment in education of women has further benefits over and above the immediate and direct economic gains. It could result in lower population growth as education increases opportunity-cost of child rearing and enhances awareness of economic difficulties of bringing-up children on limited resources. This would have a positive impact on Pakistan’s population growth dragging-down the country’s per capita income. Also, it is more likely that children of educated mothers contribute more to the society's uplift.

These social benefits alone would pay for the investment in education. However, there are additional benefits in the shape of increased productivity of those educated women who work in cottage industries. To reap these social and economic benefits of women’s participation in the economy, education for girls for a minimum period of six years is a must.

A hindrance to the encouragement of women education is the restriction on males teaching female students in the rural areas. Therefore, the government should initiate a scheme for training women teachers as this will not only provide them with gainful employment in a socially acceptable environment but also increase women education in villages.

In addition, government and the NGOs should strive to promote role-models of rural women who have embraced education and made a positive contribution to their families and communities. This is important in order to break the cultural taboo and social resistance to women playing an active role in the society.

The country’s economic managers point at the tremendous strides made in achieving macro-economic stability. However, limited progress has been made in the field of human capital development and empowerment of the most vulnerable segment of our society-the rural women. Even the two terms by a female prime minister and repeated assurance of emancipation of women by successive governments have done little to improve the lives of rural women.

Furthermore, failure of the government to take necessary action and the dismal state of the nation’s two-tier educational system - one for its nation's sons and the other for its daughters - is manifested in the statistics showing Pakistan as one of only 18 countries where female literacy is half that of men.

The positive development is that women have made substantial gains in achieving economic and social progress in the urban centres. Two decades ago, the only professions considered appropriate for women were medicine and academia. However, as a result of extensive provision of education through private institutions, women are entering previously “no-go” fields such as information technology and banking. Women now occupy senior executive positions in the corporate world-- a domain dominated by men not too long ago.

The challenges of replicating the progress of urban women to the rural areas are more than one. In the past, efforts to enhance literacy amongst rural women were doomed to fail as a result of the vehement resistance of the powerful alliance of feudal and religious leaders who fear the threat posed by women’s education to society's traditional power-structures.

In particular, the vested interests of the feudal in maintaining the status quo as a means to preserving their power have stalled any effort to tackle female illiteracy. However, the benefits of bringing rural women into the mainstream by leveraging their skills to enhance the country's development are limitless and this should give the government a strong impetus to take this mission seriously.

Our government espouses enlightened moderation. However, this social transformation has to be brought about at the micro level that is at the basic unit of society which is family. What better method can there be to infuse a spirit of enlightenment and moderation than such values taught to a child by her educated mother? This is not only desirable, but also imperative if we hope to overcome the threat of increased population and economic stagnation.