Talking empowerment

First a few elementary statistics on gender inequality in Pakistan: according to the Global Gender Gap Index Report 2018, launched in October last year; Pakistan ranks at 148th position out of 149 countries.

The gender gap in the country is highlighted by the literacy rate of women (at 44.3 percent) as compared to that of men (at 69.1 percent). Women’s participation in the labour force is 26.3 percent while men’s is 85.8 percent. And women’s parliamentary presence is 20.6 percent against men’s 79.4 percent.

There have been articles recently on the need for women’s empowerment. Rather than repeating the commentary here, it may be worthwhile to contextualise the broader concepts of women’s empowerment in social science literature. That might add to the debate on women’s empowerment.

Naila Kabeer’s seminal work (1999, 2005) on conceptualising women’s empowerment is revisited in this article. To contextualise women’s empowerment in general, as well as in Pakistan’s perspective, this article also looks at some other literature (Khan 2011, Mishra and Tripathi 2011, Farré 2013, Balagamwala et al 2015).

Women’s empowerment is about change and the ability to expand women’s ability to ‘make strategic life choices’ and graduate to be able to make decisions where this ability was not available to them earlier. Women’s ability to choose means that they have a set of alternatives available. Lack of choice has a different impact on women and men. In the case of the poor, gender-centric inequalities often deepen the impact of poverty.

In other words, choice, power, option, control over one’s life etc are all linked to empowerment. There are three tightly interlinked dimensions of empowerment in terms of agency: conventional, human, social resources; and achievements or outcomes. Resources are the ‘enabling conditions’ and operate through societal relationships and institutions.

Agency is central to empowerment as choices are made through it. Agency must be transformative, giving women, particularly poor women, more ability to “question, analyse, and act on the structures of patriarchal constraint in their lives”; it brings a change through longer-term processes. Achievements refer to the outcomes of exercise of agency.

There is a need to move along the continuum from individual agency to collective power, from private bargaining arrangements to collective action, and from the informal space to the formal arena for legitimate exercise of power.

The three operational resources to promote gender equality and women’s empowerment are progress on indicators of education, paid employment, and political participation. Acquiring education increases the chance for women to take care of their own as well as their family’s wellbeing. Research undertaken in rural Zimbabwe revealed that education and paid work increased the likelihood of women to access antenatal care and contraception which in turn helped improve maternal wellbeing and survival.

In terms of women’s access to paid work and resources, microcredit is considered to result in positive outcomes in certain aspects. The increasing feminisation of the labour force, particularly in cotton picking in the agricultural sector in Sindh and other regions is worth considering. On the one hand, there is a link between nutrition and empowerment and, on the other hand, there is a trade-off between earning income by women and care at the household level given the hazardous nature of work.

Agricultural growth intrinsically may not lead to conditions for pro-nutrition decisions, particularly for those who are socially at a disadvantageous position, unless the growth process is geared towards inclusivity and provides a conducive environment.

The Lady Health Workers’ Programme, which started in 1994, is worth considering as it has transformed into a ‘conduit’ for the operationalisation of nearly all community health initiatives. Whatever success Pakistan has achieved in bringing down maternal and infant mortality rates might not have been achieved had it not been for the community work of LHWs. Moreover, it has also led to some empowerment of the LHWs as they are becoming leaders in their rural communities and also indulging in collective action to transition from their short-term work to better work entitlements.

In terms of political participation, the ‘strategic presence’ of women through quotas in parliament is encouraging. As per the press, the National Commission on the Status of Women (NCSW)’s report on the 2018 elections states that there is both “incremental progress” as well as ample room for further improvement. The Election Act 2017 sets a minimum five percent mandatory quota for political parties to award tickets to women. While that led to a steady increase in the number of women candidates, the women who won on general seats were less in number than in 2013 and 2008 elections since in 2018 women were given tickets by political parties on ‘unwinnable seats’. In other words, it was a checking-the-box exercise. Similarly, there is progress in terms of calling an election result void in a constituency, where women voter turnout is less than 10 percent.

In Pakistan, women parliamentarians have contributed in the past in terms of pushing legislation, particularly pro-women legislation. However, unless women are stopped being treated as proxies or merely added vote bank for the ruling and other political parties, this transition to meaningful political participation cannot be complete. Women’s political participation at the level of local governments is also immensely important.

Grassroots mobilisation of women, particularly poor women, is the key to holding policymakers accountable for a meaningful process of change and women’s empowerment. Similarly, policies to promote gender equality should include both women and men and not exclusively focus on women; otherwise it might not be effective.

The present government’s initiative of giving 10 days paternity leave to men working in the NCSW is a welcome step and must be expanded, along with other holistic initiatives.

The writer is an Islamabad-based social scientist.