Wage employment, entrepreneurship: Pakistan faces significant gender gaps: World Bank

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan faces significant gender gaps in wage employment, entrepreneurship, and access to productive assets, with an estimated 47 million women are not in the labor force, and around 55 million unbanked, says the World Bank.

The bank in its report, “Women’s Economic Empowerment in Pakistan: An Evidence Guided Toolkit for More Inclusive Policies,” stated that Pakistan faces a plethora of economic, human capital, political, and climate-related challenges.

The role of women in addressing these challenges is crucial to Pakistan meeting its full potential for inclusive growth and competitiveness.

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An estimated 47 million women are not in the labour force, and there are 55 million unbanked women.

The gender gap in earnings in Pakistan stands at 18 percent. Employed women earn less than their men counterparts. This means that, for every Rs1,000 earned by an employed man, an employed woman earns Rs818. The gender gap in earnings has remained stable over the years, from around 40 percent in 1999 to 39 percent in 2017.

However, recent data indicate there has been a significant narrowing of the gap, to 18 percent. This large reduction is driven by an increase in earnings among women and a dip in men’s earnings.

Improving gender equality in the economy and society thus appears to be a necessary path to addressing many of the country’s development problems, such as the country’s stagnating per capita income, human capitalcrisis, and the recent worrisome increase in poverty.

Pakistani women need more visibility and autonomy in all spheres of the economy and society. Their legal rights lag those of their peers in other South Asian countries and are lower than the global average.

The report noted that women in Pakistan face significant barriers to entry in the labour force, securing fair, higher wages, physically accessing markets to develop their businesses, accessing financial services, owning productive assets, especially land and other property, having an equal say over important day-to-day decisions, and living lives free of gender-based violence.

Overcoming these and other like barriers requires solutions that go beyond one size fits all and, instead, focus on addressing problems by putting women and girls at the forefront of policy design.

Women in Pakistan also contend with critical issues related to safety, mobility, agency, and restrictive social norms.

The report provides an in-depth analysis of these disparities and introduces an evidence-based policy toolkit that prioritises actionable solutions drawn from global and regional evidence while highlighting areas that require further research.

Utilising extensive micro data from national and regional surveys, it offers a comprehensive 20-year review of trends and insights into women’s work and empowerment across multiple indicators, paving the way for targeted, data-driven policy interventions.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2025

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