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n June this year, the World Economic Forum released the 19th edition of its Global Gender Gap Report, ranking Pakistan at the bottom (148th). The report measures countries’ progress towards gender parity on four key dimensions: economic participation and opportunity; educational attainment; health and survival; and political empowerment. As highlighted in the report, Pakistan ranks 147th in “economic participation and opportunity.”It has consistently ranked among the four lowest countries on the WEF’s Global Gender Gap Report since its inception in 2006.
Pakistan’s gender gap in labour force participation rates (LFPR) is one of the world’s highest. There is a 56-point gap when we compare LFPR for women (25 percent) and men (81 percent). For the last 15 years, the female LFPR has hovered around 23 percent. This piece focuses on labour force participation and recommends certain reforms to improve women’s workforce engagement.
Women constitute 49 percent of Pakistan’s 241 million population and 23 percent of the labour force. An estimated 47 million women are out of the labour force. Even when women want to participate in the labour force, they are unable to find employment. There is a noticeable gender gap in unemployment. It is 5.5 percent for male workers and 9.2 percent for female workers. In the urban areas, the female unemployment rate rises to 16.4 percent compared to male rate of 6 percent.
Women’s share in overall wage employment is less than 20 percent as they are engaged primarily as contributing family workers (56 percent), eventually working without pay. Of all the working women in Pakistan, 75 percent are in vulnerable employment, a combination of self-employed work and contributing (unpaid) family work, which makes them both invisible and vulnerable to economic shocks.
When women work, they are primarily engaged in agriculture (68 percent) as contributing family workers, followed by community/ social and personal services (15.8 percent) and manufacturing (14.2 percent). More than 40 percent of the employed women work part-time (less than 35 hours per week) as compared to 7 percent of men. Data shows that Pakistan has a youth population (aged 15-24 years) of 50 million, of which 18 million are neither in education, training, nor in any employment (NEET). This translates into a NEET rate of 36 percent. The NEET rate for female youth is 56 percent.
The gender wage gap for mean monthly income is 19 percent, meaning a female worker earns 81 rupees for every 100 rupees earned by a male worker. The median gender wage gap (showing the experience of a typical worker) is nearly double the mean wage gap, i.e., 37.5 percent. The factor-weighted gender wage gap, an adjusted measure of wage inequality that controls for key characteristics of male and female workers — such as age, education, occupation, sector (public/private) and working time (part-time/full-time), is also 30 percent. This shows that there is gender bias or discriminatory practices at the workplace level that needs to be removed through law reforms.
Article 18 of the constitution allows every citizen to enter upon any lawful profession or occupation. Gender inequality is enshrined in law. However, there is no legislation prohibiting discrimination at work and requiring equal pay for work of equal value. Article 25 of the constitution guarantees equal treatment of all citizens. It provides that there shall be no discrimination based on sex. Simultaneously, it allows the state to carry out affirmative action to protect women and children. These protective measures (prohibitions on night work and certain hazardous work) have, however, led to reduced economic opportunities for women.
According to the Women, Business and Law Index 2024, Pakistan’s score is 58.8 out of 100 (assessment is based on Sindh laws). WBL measures how laws and regulations affect women’s economic opportunities and participation. The Labour Rights Index, a de-jure index produced by the WageIndicator Foundation and the Centre for Labour Research, gives the highest score to Balochistan (70.5 out of 100), followed by Sindh (59.5), Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (59), the Punjab (53.5) and Islamabad (41). LRI, covering 145 countries, identifies access to labour rights, or lack thereof, in national legal systems while comparing local laws with international labour standards.
Labour laws in Pakistan do not afford women workers the same rights as men. They limit the occupations they can engage in, allow discrimination at the workplace, do not require separate washing facilities for women at the workplace, link daycare centres at the workplace with the number of women only and allow employers to dismiss a woman worker during pregnancy or on getting married. It is interesting to note that the National Gender Policy Framework 2021 does not even refer to improvement in labour legislation or cooperation with the Ministry of Overseas Pakistanis and Human Resource Development or Labour Departments.
There is no legal right to flexible or remote work arrangements. The legislation must include a right to request flexible/ remote work and prohibit discrimination for part-time status. This is aligned with safety/ mobility constraints and helps mothers re-enter work.
To improve female labour force participation and ultimately raise Pakistan’s ranking on the WEF Global Gender Gap Report, the following reforms must be enacted, starting with the Federal Capital.
Right to Choose Profession
While Article 18 grants the right to choose one’s profession, women workers in the federal capital are legally restricted from working beyond 7 pm in any office or factory. The Factories Act 1934, a colonial leftover, prohibited the employment of women beyond sunset. Ninety-one years after its enactment, the law still prohibits working beyond 7 pm.
Labour laws limit the employment opportunities for 75 million working-age women in Pakistan by restricting the jobs they can undertake and when and where they are allowed to work. Other than mining, there is an extensive list of hazardous operations where the employment of women and children is prohibited. Instead of basing restrictions on risk assessment for each job, focusing on training women for arduous or hazardous work, providing them with necessary personal protective equipment and limiting the restriction to work in hazardous operations to only pregnant or nursing women, the labour legislation outright prohibits the employment of women in such occupations.
There is a need to replace sex-based prohibitions (e.g., bans on night work/ heavy machinery) with hazard-based, gender-neutral rules and safeguards (such as safe company transport, security and written consent for night work, etc.). Research has already shown that access to safe and secure transport (employer-provided or public transport) can improve female labour force participation.
Equal pay and prohibition of discrimination
Pakistan currently lacks a nationwide, explicit legal guarantee of “equal remuneration for work of equal value” aligned with ILO Convention 100. None of the provinces yet defines “remuneration” as broadly as C100, though Balochistan has introduced the principle and gender-neutral job evaluation; draft labour codes in the Punjab and Sindh (if adopted) would align with C100.
Discrimination in employment or occupation, both direct and indirect, based on sex, religion, gender, caste, ethnic background, race, colour, creed, sect, age, language, marital status, pregnancy and maternity, family responsibilities, disability, trade union membership, political opinion and residence or place of birth must be prohibited in law. These provisions have been included in detail in the upcoming Punjab and Sindh Labour Codes. The legislation in Balochistan, enacted in recent years, has included necessary reforms on the subject.
Legislation must also require wages to be deposited into workers’ own accounts. It improves women’s control over their income and also ensures electronic record-keeping of the wage payments.
Family leaves and protection from dismissal
Pakistan’s laws generally provide 12 weeks of paid maternity leave (with some variation by province and sector). While this meets the basic ILO requirement, it is shorter than the 14 weeks recommended by the ILO under C183. The discriminatory provisions on reduced maternity leave (180 days for the first child; 120 days for the second, and 90 days for the third) under the Maternity and Paternity Leave Act 2023 should also be removed.
Pakistan has no system of government-paid maternity benefits for private sector workers – employers bear the cost (either by contributing to social security or paying in full). This can discourage hiring of women.
Extending the leave duration and sharing the cost through a social insurance scheme could improve women’s retention in the workforce (coverage of all workers through social security). There is no provision for paternity leave (except under the Factory Act in the Punjab) or parental leave. There is a need to prohibit the dismissal of women workers during pregnancy. Legislation should also incorporate paid nursing breaks and require reasonable facilities for women workers at the workplace. These provisions have been included in the draft Punjab and Sindh Labour Codes.
Daycare Centres
The current legislation requires creches for children under six in specified factories where women are ordinarily employed. Still, coverage is narrow, factory-focused (in the Punjab, it also covers offices) and contingent on the number of women (though legislation has been amended in all provinces except Islamabad), excluding many employers and sectors where women work (services, agriculture, small enterprises). Instead of linking the setting up of creches or daycare facilities to the number of women workers, these should be linked to the total number of workers, irrespective of their gender. Similarly, a clustre-based or community-based approach to daycare centres could be adopted instead of maintaining the high threshold of 70 workers required under the Daycare Centres Act 2023.
Protect flexible, part-timeand remote work
There is no legal right to flexible or remote work arrangements. The legislation must include a right to request flexible/ remote work and prohibit discrimination for part-time status. This is aligned with safety/ mobility constraints and helps mothers re-enter work. Flexible working hours and telecommuting could help more women remain employed while managing household responsibilities. Currently, the lack of part-time or remote work options in the formal sector pushes many Pakistani women to drop out of the workforce or choose informal home-based work.
Expand legal coverage to under-protected workers
Women work mainly in the agriculture and services sectors. Legislative reforms should explicitly cover agriculture, domestic, home-based and platform workers for minimum wage, OSH, social security, harassment protection and maternity/ parental rights. While all provinces have enacted legislation on home-based work except Islamabad, the draft Labour Codes in the Punjab and Sindh already cover all of the above worker categories.
Improving FLFPR can unlock unprecedented economic dividends for the nation. According to the World Bank studies, removing gender distortions in Pakistan’s labour markets could boost GDP by roughly 25 percent. Another report shows that closing the female employment gap to the lower-middle-income country (LMIC) average (41 percent) could boost Pakistan’s GDP by 9 to 23 per cent. While legal reforms alone are not a cure-all, legal equality does lead to labour market equality.
Iftikhar Ahmad is the founder of the Centre for Labour Research, Pakistan. He can be reached at ia72cornell.edu
Sobia Mir is the director at Labour Lens, Pakistan.