ISLAMABAD, Oct 30: Speakers here on Thursday called for gender equality in the country, terming it a key to national progress.

They were speaking at the concluding ceremony of a four-day workshop on ‘Gender sensitive project planning skills’.

The workshop was organised by Gender Based Governance System (GBG) Project of Planning and Development Division and UNDP and attended by 22 planning officers of the Federal and AJK governments. The Pakistan Institute of Development Economics (PIDE) conducted the workshop.

On the occasion, Secretary Planning and Development Suhail Safdar said the gender mainstreaming was in line with the broader policy initiatives conceived in the medium term development framework and the gender reform action plans of the government. He said in future it would be ensured that gender impact was properly considered in the formulation of PC-1 for every development project of the government.

He informed the participants that the government was committed to international obligations on gender equality and execute it in all its policies, programmes and projects.

The secretary said women elected representatives at national, provincial and district levels were involved in decision making and programme development. He termed the capacity building of government officers as an important initiative to sensitise the government machinery in order to achieve gender equality goals.

He further said direct beneficiaries of Benazir Income Support Program worth Rs34 billion were women and that it was a major step by the government toward empowering women in the country.

Dr Rashid Amjad, chief economist Planning Commission, said the women in Pakistan as well as in most of the least developed countries (LDCs) remained overworked and underpaid resource whose real potential to contribute to development and growth had never been sufficiently tapped. The female literacy rate for women stands at 41 per cent as compared to 65 percent for men in Pakistan. Consequently, women earn significantly less than men, he added.

While emphasising the need for taking into account the gender perspective of development projects and policies, he, quoting Dr Mehboob-ul-Haq, said: “Without engendering development, development is endangered.” He hoped that such trainings would improve gender mainstreaming in our society.

Alvaro Rodriguez, country director UNDP, said the organisation in collaboration with the Planning and Development Division was supporting the government in capacity enhancement and policy support.

He said capacity building support was provided to influence the government policy on making public sector programmes and projects more gender sensitive and improve government capacity to undertake gender analysis in order to meet national and international commitments on gender equality.

The main objective of the training course was to enhance the capacity of government officials to mainstream gender in the formulation, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of government plans and policies, he said.