Pakistan’s worrying gender gap

Pakistan is going to bump along the bottom of development pond for a long time if it will not invest in human capital

There is a depressing familiarity about the ranking of Pakistan — at one above the bottom of the league — in the Global Gender Gap Report issued by the World Economic Forum. There are those who dismiss reports such as this as being unrepresentative, but time has shown that the trends they pinpoint have a remarkable accuracy and consistency about them, and they cannot be lightly dismissed. The report examines the relative gaps between women and men across four key indicators — health, education, economy and politics. Pakistan is ranked at 141 (out of 142) for the economic participation and opportunities for women, 132 for educational attainment, 119 for health and survival and 85 for political empowerment. Things have actually got worse for women in terms of economic participation, slipping from 112 in 2006 to 141 today, a figure that ought to be a national shame given the billions of rupees spent on narrowing gaps such as these by external donors and the federal and provincial governments. Every key indicator shows a declining trend.

As per usual, the Nordic countries headed the league table. They are all secular democracies with high levels of corporate and individual taxation, universal free education, universal healthcare and low birthrates. All have relatively low rates of violent crime, and are virtually (but not completely) corruption free — the complete antithesis of Pakistan and the other countries clustered at the bottom of the table. Should Pakistan aspire to emulate them? Yes and no. There are cultural and economic reasons for the obvious narrowness of the gender gap in northern Europe, with the subcontinental countries still in recovery-mode from centuries of colonial rule that is going to echo for centuries more, but that should be no excuse for not trying harder. Pakistan could do better but chooses not to — rather its successive governments choose not to. The proportion of the GDP spent on education has dropped since 2006, as has spending on health. If Pakistan chooses not to invest in its human capital, then it is going to bump along the bottom of the development pond for a long time.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 31^st, 2014.

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