In a political system that cannot ensure that women get their reserved seats in the federal and provincial assemblies immediately after the elections, expecting early closure of gender gaps is a great expectation. In a society where many ‘intellectuals’ still think that these reserved seats should instead go to ‘technocrats’, it becomes practically too difficult to push for women’s rights.

Women’s rights groups and women parliamentarians will have to work much harder than their peers in other countries to get even close to the ultimate objective of closing gender gaps.

Since the beginning of this century, Pakistan has been working on financial inclusion — the umbrella under which women and all segments of the underprivileged population should get access to formal financing.

The results achieved so far are somewhat encouraging, given the plight of women before the Musharraf era. But they are not so encouraging if you seek evidence of strong elemental changes. The country has yet to develop a comprehensive and dedicated national strategy to close gender gaps in its labour force.

Female entrepreneurship rate in Pakistan is just 4pc against 7.2pc in Bangladesh and 14pc in India

The female labour force continues to expand, though, under the influence of domestic socio-economic challenges, patchy policy initiatives, and collaboration with global financial institutions like the World Bank and Asian Development Bank (ADB).

The same is true for female education. The absolute number of educated females continues to grow under the above-listed influences, but gender disparity remains too high. As of 2022, 48 per cent of Pakistani women were literate compared to 70pc of men. In rural areas, there were only 36pc of literate women compared to 63pc of men.

This gender inequality in education, along with the tribal mindset of those in power, is responsible for producing, nurturing, and upholding gender disparities in other areas, including access to formal finance, work, and entrepreneurship.

Female labour force participation in Pakistan is 23pc compared with 43pc in Bangladesh. Female entrepreneurship rate in Pakistan is just 4pc against 7.2pc in Bangladesh and 14pc in India.

A low level of female labour participation deprives the fairer gender of the opportunities to empower themselves financially. A lack of financial empowerment makes it difficult for women to live a life of their own choice.

Similarly, the low level of female entrepreneurship serves as a main impediment to achieving gender equality in businesses and the jobs market. Can we expect a male entrepreneur to even consider gender equality while working on his business and create as many jobs for women as for men? At least, not in the foreseeable future.

The rising number of new bank accounts opened and operated by women deserves due appreciation. As of June 2023, women owned 49 million bank accounts or roughly 28pc of the total 177m accounts. Of these, 29m accounts, or 16.4pc of overall bank accounts, were verifiably owned and operated by women. This represents 43pc of the total female population in the country.

But these stats cannot hide the societal prejudices and discriminations against women. The apparently impressive growth in the number of women-owned and operated bank accounts is largely due to two factors: one is the digitalisation of the disbursement of governmental cash support programmes for women, including the Benazir Income Support Fund, and the other is the growing facility of digital cash transfers available to all. Neither can be taken as a sign of real financial empowerment of women.

This objective will remain elusive unless the entire legal regime for hereditary property and assets is amended to ensure that women get their due share timely and without hassle. This will also remain elusive if the push for ensuring gender equality in corporate boardrooms and corporate employees remains weak and slow and injustices being done to women farmers and rural female workers are not stopped.

Considering these and similar limitations to women’s financial inclusion, the ADB approved a $155.5m financing facility in December last year. A larger portion of this funding ($100m) is meant to support policy reforms for women’s financial inclusion.

The remaining $50m financial intermediation loan is earmarked for enabling participating financial institutions to lend to women entrepreneurs. The success of the ADB programme depends largely on the willingness of the federal and provincial governments to initiate real policy pushes for women’s financial empowerment.

Under the present weak political setup, with the establishment’s overwhelming interventions and the PTI-led opposition set to launch a nationwide campaign to end this “engineered” political regime, the government will find it extremely difficult to pursue any long-term socio-political objectives — except those dictated by the International Monetary Fund.

Another relevant question is how long the typical pseudoreligious and feudal mindset will remain the major tool of our powerful players. The sooner they replace these tools with better ones, the earlier the required political and societal support for gender equality will move to the next level.

Published in Dawn, The Business and Finance Weekly, March 11th, 2024