TO celebrate the infinitesimal improvement in Pakistan’s ranking on the global gender gap index would be premature, and indicate a lack of self-awareness. We fare so badly on many of the sub-indexes which together contribute towards the final score that the road ahead seems interminable. In the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report 2023, Pakistan’s ranking has improved from 145 to 142 out of 146 countries. This is on account of the country having gained 5.1 percentage points in the economic participation and opportunities sub-index — which still translates into one of the lowest levels of parity. In the overall ranking, Pakistan is ahead of only Algeria, Chad, Iran and Afghanistan. However, it is moving at least in the right direction in the aforementioned sub-index, particularly where progress in the share of women technical workers and the achievement of parity in wage equality for similar work is concerned. Pakistan’s widest gender gap is on political empowerment (15.2pc). The number of women in decision-making posts in political parties or in government is miniscule. Most parties pay lip service to female representation at the time of elections: not only do they barely meet the mandatory requirement of 5pc quota for female candidates, they also tend to nominate them on hard-to-win seats. Meanwhile, reserved seats, while they do give women a voice in parliament, are largely seen as a political favour bestowed on the female relatives of male parliamentarians. That keeps political empowerment restricted to a small, elite clique which, in terms of the country as a whole, does not translate into empowerment at all.

For transformative advancement in gender equality, a basic prerequisite is an environment where women are safe from violence and have agency in taking important life decisions. However, another recent report by a research and advocacy firm gives insight into the state of affairs in this respect. It documents 771 cases of violence against women in only the first four months of this year in Sindh alone. These include 529 abductions and 171 cases of domestic violence. These figures are but the tip of the iceberg: many such crimes tend to be underreported because of the social pressure to maintain a ‘respectable’ façade. Also, while laws on domestic violence, not to mention sexual harassment, are on the statute books, a patriarchal outlook hampers their effective implementation.

Published in Dawn, June 26th, 2023