Karachi
An International Women’s Day Conference was held at a local hotel by the Employers’ Federation of Pakistan (EFP) in collaboration with the International Labour Organisation (ILO), the Asian Development Bank (ADB), UN Women, and the Global Compact Network-Pakistan, at a local hotel onTuesdayevening.
All the speakers, while acknowledging the advances made by women in various fields, were of the opinion that a lot was still needed to be done for giving women their rightful place in society and the workplace.
There was also consensus over the fact that true development in Pakistan was particularly stymied because of age-old values and social mores.
Keynote speaker Dr Khalida Ghous of the Social Policy Development Centre (SPDC) lamented that she could count on her fingertips issues that had been met while carrying out a gender audit for 2013, 2014, and 2015.
“Do parliamentarians, men and women, really know what gender budgeting is all about?” she queried. “Both men and women parliamentarians need to be duly oriented as their understanding of empowerment is flawed.”
She said that women empowerment was all the more important as it remained the only way to stifle poverty. “Globally, women are half as likely to be at par with men. More women than men are unemployed.”
Shouket Ali, president of the All-Pakistan Trade Unions Congress, said there had to be sustainability in the development of the nation through women empowerment.
“The weaker position of women in the capitalist scheme of things has affected national development. Keeping women out of the mainstream and putting hurdles in the way of their development has proved disastrous for us,” he said, and addedthat it was essential that all stakeholders join hands to tackle the problem threadbare and acknowledge the equality of men and women.
It was interesting to see an employers’ body inviting a representative of the workers to speak, given the gaping employer-worker gap and bickering whereby they both find themselves at other ends of the pole and bitterly opposed to each other.
Mustafa Suhag, labour director for Sindh, said that progress made by the West was mainly because of women’s equal participation. He said nine bills had been passed by the Sindh Assembly for the emancipation and equality of women.
Uzma Altaf, of the Asian Development Bank in Islamabad, said that women in Pakistan were mostly in the informal sector which placed them in a very vulnerable position. It is sad that Pakistan is losing 25 percent of its GDP because of relegating her womenfolk.
Chief guest Tahira Raza, chairperson of the First Women’s Bank Ltd, said that we had to look at the biases, the social mores, and the collective psyche we are brought up with.
“We need legislative support,” she said and added that certain terms and words should be banned. She highlighted the progressive steps her bank had resorted to in the matter of women’s emancipation.
She said that given the societal conditions, leave aside women, even men had to face lots of adversities.
Sindh Assembly member Shamim Mumtaz repeated the late Benizir Bhutto’s words to the effect, “If 52 percent of the women don’t work, we can never progress.”
She said that their group had worked on the matter of acid attacks, child marriages, especially in Thar where under-aged girls were married off and as a result reproduced prolifically which jeopardised their health and well- being.
Saghir Bokhari of ILO, Islamabad, said that we’d come a long way since the women’s conference held in Beijing two decades ago but there was still lots that needed to be done. Pakistan, he said, had ratified 36 conventions, but the gender gap here was still 23 percent.
Khawaja Muhammad Nauman, president of the Employers’ Federation of Pakistan, quoting aWorld Economic Forum (WEF) report, said that it would take women 117 years to reach ideal parity with men.
He underlined the need for gender equality in the marketplace and said that research had revealedthat gender equality led to better all-round performance and marketability.
The speeches by the above-noted and other speakers were followed by a panel discussion, and Squadron Leader Shakila Nasser said that women were second to none when it came to executing exacting jobs and narrated her own achievements in a domain which has always been considered an exclusive male preserve.
Sadaffe Abid said that research had shown that were women to be given total parity, the global GDP would go up by 23 trillion dollars.
Fasihul Karim Siddiqui, general secretary of the Employers’ Federation of Pakistan, compered the proceedings.