Pakistan now ranks last among 148 countries on the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Index 2025, with an overall parity score of 56.7 per cent, marking a second consecutive annual decline. According to the latest WEF report, Pakistan’s economic participation and opportunity score fell by 1.3 percentage points, with the share of women in ministerial positions dropping from 5.9pc to zero.

Yet, the same report reveals a puzzling paradox: educational attainment parity improved by 1.5 percentage points, rising to 85.1pc, partly driven by female literacy gains from 46.5pc to 48.5pc. Pakistan, it appears, is educating more women but employing fewer of them.

A recent Gallup analysis of the PBS Labour Force Survey 2024-25 confirms this inverse relationship; unemployment among women rises steadily with education, reaching nearly 24pc for those with master’s, MPhil, or PhD degrees. This means nearly one in four highly educated women in Pakistan is unemployed. The findings highlight a structural disconnect between progress in female education and the labour market’s capacity to absorb educated workers, underscoring a structural failure that demands a fundamental rethink of how we approach women’s economic inclusion.

The problem is conceptual before it is fiscal. Pakistan’s approach to women’s empowerment has long been piecemeal. Most directives, whether governmental or private, have often operated by implementing an education programme here, a harassment law there, a microfinance scheme elsewhere.

With a female population of approximately 126m, the continued exclusion of half the population from productive activity is both fiscally reckless and inequitable

Although these initiatives have targeted formidable barriers for women, they have mostly overlooked how the barriers women face compound each other. Education without employment pathways wastes human capital. Employment without childcare forces women to exit the workforce. Childcare without education perpetuates intergenerational inequality.

Piecemeal interventions will only reproduce the same results. What we need is an ecosystem; one where education, employment, and childcare function as interdependent pillars of a single economic strategy. Safety, mobility, and workplace norms matter critically, but they are enabling conditions within these pillars, not pillars themselves. Each pillar is essential; none delivers on its own.

The first pillar, education, has received the most policy attention, yet yielded the least economic return. Pakistan still has over 20 million out-of-school children, with girls disproportionately represented.

The 2010 devolution of education to the provincial level has produced uneven results, with rural Balochistan and interior Sindh lagging furthest behind. The dropout problem begins before girls can remain consistently in school and infrastructure shapes whether access translates into retention. In rural Bahawalpur, for example, a student-led initiative that constructed sanitation facilities across four girls’ primary schools produced a 6pc increase in monthly attendance within weeks.

Yet even where enrolment improves, the returns on girls’ education are being squandered. An educated woman who cannot enter or remain in the workforce is educated in name but excluded in practice. Without parallel growth in formal services, professional occupations, and knowledge-based industries, rising educational attainment will continue to coincide with joblessness among women. Until education is connected to employment pathways and supported by enabling infrastructure, its economic multiplier will remain suppressed.

The second pillar, employment, reveals the depth of the structural exclusion. The Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) Labour Force Survey (LFS) reports that the overall female crude participation rate stands at just 16.3pc nationally, against 49.2pc for males. This disparity persists across every province, from Punjab’s relatively higher rural participation to Balochistan’s urban rate of just 5.7pc. Women constitute only 6.1pc of those in managerial positions nationally, highlighting a very low absorption rate.

In rural areas, where agriculture absorbs most men and women, women make up nearly 70pc of the workforce, yet own less than 2pc of arable land, and 76pc of those employed in agriculture work without pay.

Financial exclusion further compounds the problem: only 13pc of women have accounts with formal financial institutions, compared to 34pc of men, while the share of female borrowers in microfinance has declined from 54pc to 46pc between 2018 and 2024, despite women demonstrating superior repayment behaviour. Interestingly, Pakistan’s obsession with indirect taxes, such as sales tax, fuel levies, and energy tariffs, disproportionately affects women’s disposable income, restricting their ability to save or invest.

The third pillar, childcare, is where the system begins to strain. Even when women are educated and employment opportunities exist, the absence of reliable childcare pushes them back out of the workforce.

According to the International Labour Organisation, women perform most of the unpaid care work in Pakistan. The LFS’ time-use data makes the imbalance visible: in Punjab, women aged 25–34 spend 112.4 hours on unpaid domestic and care work, compared to 88.6 hours for men. This pattern holds across provinces and age groups.

Employment without childcare simply transfers the burden home. Mandates exist in law, yet implementation remains uneven, with employers citing cost, space, and compliance challenges. Without a safe and affordable childcare infrastructure linked to workplaces, participation cannot scale. A joint study by Unicef, UN Women, and the Pakistan Business Council in May 2025 found that 77pc of unemployed parents would return to work if childcare options were available.

The fiscal case for ecosystem thinking is beyond dispute. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) estimates that closing the gender gap in labour force participation could boost Pakistan’s GDP by up to 30pc. The World Bank further estimates this at between $75 billion and $85bn in additional output. Even a modest 10pc increase in female participation could raise GDP growth by 1.5 percentage points annually.

Pakistan’s policy architecture must now adopt an ecosystem approach. First, childcare infrastructure must be mandated and funded as a core component of economic strategy. Second, employers in banking, healthcare, education, and services should receive tax credits for on-site or subsidised childcare.

Third, financial inclusion must be coupled with progressive taxation that reduces the burden on women and redirects resources towards inclusive economic policy. Without parallel growth in formal services and knowledge-based industries, and without targeted job creation in high-skill sectors, no amount of educational expansion will translate into economic participation.

The writer is an economist and the Managing Director of ACE Day Care, a women-led initiative.

Published in Dawn, The Business and Finance Weekly, March 23rd, 2026