LAHORE, Dec 12: Speakers at a workshop on “Economic empowerment for women” has demanded that the government should create opportunities and educate women to become earning partners and lead more balanced life.

The media workshop was organized by the Committee for Women’s Health, provincial steering committee for women development, the Social Welfare Department, Punjab, in collaboration with Unicef and Jahandad Society for Community Development at a local hotel on Thursday.

The speakers also demanded that the government should create a place and motivate women in rural areas to bring and exhibit their handicrafts and other rural products to sell at good prices. They said the visiting women should also be given a room accommodation at very low price.

Committee for Women’s Health chairperson Prof.Yasmin Rashid said the gainful employment made the role of a woman different in her house as well as in society.

She said women had been marginalized in the country because either they were kept uneducated or their education remained ‘non-functional education’. She stressed that parents should keep professionalism in mind while educating their daughters.

Out of 48 per cent men and 52 per cent women population, she said only 70 per cent men and around 10 per cent women were contributing towards the economic upgradation of their families and the country at large.

Smeda’s training wing representative Khurram Amin gave a presentation on women entrepreneurship of Smeda. He said Smeda provided counselling services free of cost to those who wanted to start business.

He said Smeda had recently established a separate ‘Women Entrepreneur Development Cell’ to launch various programmes for women. He said Smeda had also signed an MoU with the First Women Bank to facilitate women to get loans and start businesses.

Agriculturist Rabia Sultan spoke about her experiences of being an agriculturist. She said that she was managing a farm since 1992 and faced several problems in the beginning.

She stressed that media should highlight role models in different fields to encourage women in the urban and rural areas to come out to work for their economic empowerment. She said that women must be given exposure to work in the field. Later, two groups of media men presented their recommendations to encourage and facilitate women to work and earn.