THE UN secretary-general’s recent observation that peace lasts longer when women are at the table, economies become more dynamic when women have equal opportunity, societies more resilient when women can learn and lead, and institutions more effective when power is shared, is not simply a statement about fairness. For Pakistan, it is a development proposition. The question is not whether Pakistani women can lead. It is why a country of more than 240 million people still uses so little of that capacity. The numbers expose the gap. Pakistan’s 2024-25 HIES puts literacy among people aged 10 and above at 63 per cent: 73pc for men but only 54pc for women. The rural female rate is 44pc, compared with 68pc for urban women. Literacy determines whether a woman can understand a contract, use a digital service, claim a benefit, read a disaster warning or participate confidently in a public meeting.
The economic divide is sharper. World Bank gender data put female labour force participation at 24pc in 2025, against 80.1pc for men. Women are heavily concentrated in vulnerable work: 73.2pc of employed women were in vulnerable employment, compared with 50.4pc of men. Agriculture accounts for 68pc of women’s employment. A nation cannot fully mobilise its human capital while most women remain outside paid work or confined to insecure work and excluded from productive assets and markets.
The unpaid economy tells another story. UN Women reports that women and girls aged 10 and above spend 19.9pc of their time on unpaid domestic and care work, against 1.8pc for men. This invisible workload limits education, employment, entrepreneurship, mobility and public leadership. Empowerment, therefore, cannot mean merely inviting women into existing institutions; it must also redistribute the time, resources and care responsibilities that determine who can enter them.
Pakistan has made gains in formal representation, but presence is not the same as power. Women currently hold about 21.7pc of seats in the National Assembly, according to the Inter-Parliamentary Union. At the local level, UN Women reports women constitute about 16pc of members of local deliberative bodies, with 23,852 elected women. Yet women remain scarce in senior institutional decision-making. The National Assembly’s gender-mainstreaming committee reported in 2025 that women represented only 0.93pc in the law, civil armed forces and Interior Division, and just 5pc of vice-chancellors in general universities were women.
Presence is not the same as power.
The federal civil service illustrates the institutional problem. An Establishment Division census found women were only 5.23pc of federal civil servants, with just 26.06pc of female civil servants in grades 17-22. The data is old and should be treated as a benchmark, not a current headcount; still, it shows the depth of the pipeline problem. Corporate Pakistan presents a mixed picture. SECP’s 2024 annual report says 7,573 companies were headed by female CEOs and 5,220 women-owned businesses had accessed financing. It also reports women directors on 90pc of companies in its 2024 comparison, up from 34pc in 2019 and 10pc in 2015. Yet the World Bank’s latest gender data put women’s share of senior and middle management at only 9.6pc in 2025.
The same principle matters most in a climate-stressed country. The World Bank estimates that climate-related risks, environmental degradation and air pollution could reduce Pakistan’s GDP by at least 18-20pc by 2050. Pakistan’s climate reporting notes that women’s unequal access to resources, services, mobility and decision-making increases their vulnerability and limits effective climate action. Women are often responsible for water, food and household energy, yet can be underrepresented where adaptation budgets and disaster plans are designed. This is why slow progress on gender empowerment is not a peripheral social issue. By 2050, it could mean fewer educated women in the workforce, weaker household resilience, less diverse institutions and a smaller pool of leaders able to respond to floods, heat, water stress, food insecurity and displacement. Expanding women’s literacy, economic agency and authority would enlarge Pakistan’s decision-making capacity precisely when climate pressure is rising.
A practical policy test should measure women not only by enrolment, employment or seats occupied, but by authority exercised. Count women who control budgets, lead departments, own firms, sit on boards, negotiate land and finance, design climate policy and make decisions in their homes and communities. The secretary-general’s point can be interpreted to suggest that power is not optional for development. For Pakistan, the low level of female representation remains part of its unfinished development agenda.
The writer is a climate policy analyst.
Published in Dawn, October 6th, 2026
