‘Pakistani women most politically empowered in South Asian region’

World Bank Group senior director Caren Grown has said Pakistani women are more politically empowered than women in other South Asian countries, as 21 percent of Pakistani parliamentarians are women and this ratio is higher than in many other countries in the region as far as women’s political participation is concerned.

She was addressing a seminar entitled ‘Gender issues both globally and regionally and its relevance in Pakistan’. The event was organised by the Applied Economics Research Centre, University of Karachi, at its auditorium.

Grown was of the view that the political participation of women was pivotal for women’s empowerment and economic development. Men had played a key role in many women empowerment campaigns and supported their female colleagues in this regard, she said.

She said there were hundreds of laws in Europe and Central Asia that limited working women while there was no law in Pakistan that stopped women from work. However, she observed that early marriages in the developing world were a great challenge for professional women.

She said that only legislation for women empowerment and gender equality was not important; such norms and values must be there for bridging that gap. One third of the women in the world had faced violence at least once in their lifetime, she noted.

Grown believed that violence against women was a serious issue having economic consequences as well causing the loss of two to three percent of the GDP to the national economy.  She thought that alcoholism among men was one of the major causes of violence against women.

“Only two percent of women in Pakistan have access to private bank accounts. Women in Pakistan are predominant in university level education, but they are not transformed to the labour market. Women’s participation in the labour market boosts the economies of the country.”

She informed the audience that in 18 countries, husbands were legally empowered to stop their wives from jobs. “Empowered women will ultimately help in boosting the nation’s economy, household income and reducing poverty. In America, women’s participation in the labour market contributed to poverty reduction.”