Pakistan has fallen to the bottom of the Global Gender Gap Index (GGGI) 2025, ranking 148 out of 148 countries. This has triggered concern amongst people and policymakers – as if Pakistan’s consistent position near the bottom (often second or third last) for the last many years was not a cause of concern. The question is, why must we hit rock bottom as a nation before we feel urgency and concern?
The response issued by the National Commission on the Status of Women (NCSW) to Pakistan’s lowest-ever ranking on the Global Gender Gap Index (GGGI) 2025 regrettably misses the point. While the statement rightly identifies certain factual inaccuracies in data – such as the reported zero score for women in ministerial positions, despite women's presence in national and provincial cabinets, including Maryam Nawaz as the chief minister of Punjab – it remains limited in scope. By focusing narrowly on technical corrections and methodological flaws, the response overlooks the deeper, structural critique that such indices demand.
The GGGI focuses solely on outcome indicators in four domains: education, economic participation, health and political empowerment. It does not account for process indicators reflecting systemic efforts, women’s agency and progress over time despite structural barriers in the post-colonial societies.
By comparing outcomes across vastly different historical and political contexts, the index ignores the legacies of colonialism and imperialism that have profoundly shaped the economies and governance systems of countries in the Global South that perpetuate patriarchal biases and low investment in women’s development. How can we meaningfully compare outcomes in countries like Iceland, Finland, the UK, and other European nations—whose wealth and institutions were built through colonialism and imperialism—with those in countries such as Afghanistan, Pakistan, or many African and Middle Eastern nations that were exploited by colonial powers and are now grappling with the legacies of conflict and structural disempowerment? Such comparison is not only misleading but politically harmful. It reinforces the colonial narrative that developing countries are inherently "backward" or fail to treat women equally, while masking the global systems of exploitation that contribute to these disparities.
While the gender gap reflected in GGGI statistics undoubtedly captures a significant part of women's lived reality, it is not the only reality of women in Pakistan. Beyond the numbers, there are numerous stories of resistance, resilience, and progress that Pakistani women continue to make despite deeply entrenched patriarchal structural barriers.
Our national gender machinery needs to engage with the politics of statistics embedded within global measurement tools like the GGGI. It should raise critical questions: Who determines which dimensions of gender parity are worth measuring? Whose experiences are centred or excluded? How are these changes measured? And to what extent do these statistics reflect the complexities of gender realities in socially and economically stratified societies in the Global North and Global South? In failing to interrogate these underlying dynamics, we miss an opportunity to advocate for a more contextual, decolonial approach to measuring gender equality—one that reflects the historical legacies, structural barriers and local struggles that shape the lived realities of women in the Global South.
Post-colonial societies can only demonstrate progress in closing the gender gap if we use process indicators, because these capture the liberation potential of women who are pushing boundaries despite systemic constraints. For example, while we may have very few women in cabinet positions, political progress can be reflected in the narrowing gender gap in voter registration, increasing voter turnout among women, or the rising number of women candidates in Election 2024. In several constituencies, female voter turnout even surpassed that of men.
An unprecedented number of women contested elections, defying systemic and structural barriers that have long hindered their electoral success. Although many were not elected, their candidacies symbolised a deliberate and determined effort to reclaim political space. These efforts persist despite formidable challenges, including political parties acting as gatekeepers, a lack of constituency-based support, widespread political violence and limited access to financial resources.
Similarly, in education, while overall literacy rates may remain low, there is now near parity in higher education enrollment and a remarkable 400 per cent increase in the number of women appearing for the civil service examinations. These developments suggest a
slow but steady transformation in the gender composition of the bureaucracy. This could reshape public institutions over the next decade. These are incremental but meaningful shifts that outcome indicators fail to capture.
To fully understand the progress in bridging the gender gap in post-colonial societies, it is essential to move beyond narrow outcome indicators and focus instead on process indicators – those that capture everyday struggles, acts of resistance, inclusion and transformative efforts led by women. When global indices privilege quantifiable results over women's lived realities and political struggles and agency, they risk obscuring the deeper, ongoing gender dynamics of change – particularly in countries consistently ranked at the lower end of the GGGI.
It is important now that Pakistan develops its own National Gender Gap Index, which incorporates process indicators of women’s development into the national data systems. These indicators should be standardised per global data frameworks, so that our national statistics can be seamlessly integrated into international indices without raising concerns about reliability or consistency.
However, the purpose of creating our own Gender Gap Index is not to boost Pakistan’s ranking on global scales artificially but to recognise, document and celebrate the courage, resilience and achievements of Pakistani women – especially those who are driving change from the margins.
Focusing on process indicators can highlight the cracks women are making in patriarchal structures, which represent sites of resistance and transformation. These cracks must be acknowledged and reinforced through robust government policies and support so that the gender gap can be narrowed across all spheres of life.
The writer is a human rights activist and ex-director Gender Studies, QAU. She can be reached at: drfarzanabari@gmail.com
