The missing women — again

A significant element of the problem is education, both quality and access


Editorial November 26, 2017

Pakistan once again losing out, and the missing women central to the loss; and the World Bank has once again reminded us of the blindingly obvious. Not enough jobs are being created for a growing and better educated workforce, there is not enough access to jobs or opportunities for women, and there needs to be an improvement in the quality and productivity of the jobs that already exist. Fertility rates remain stubbornly high despite innumerable ‘drives’ to promote limiting family sizes and birth-spacing; and the nation’s working age population is expected to grow at 2.1% per annum for the next decade.

All this was highlighted in a World Bank report. The problem with virtually all the problems that Pakistan faces is that they are for the most part well-known, have been for decades in some instances, are soluble by appropriate interventions and unsolved because successive governments have been unwilling or unable to think and act outside the box. Entrepreneurship is picked out as a vital avenue to meeting the challenges outlined above. There needs to be more productive self-employment and the government needs to open pathways to creating a more vibrant small-and-medium enterprises (SMEs) sector along with greater opportunities for young people and women. Currently women represent just 2% of all SME employers. Entry to the private sector at the SME level is limited with 4,830 new limited liability companies being established in 2014, a rate far below other developing nations.

A significant element of the problem is education, both quality and access. The Punjab education board has recently and belatedly updated its textbooks across the range, to generally good reviews. Sindh has stubbornly refused to revise anything and remains in the educational Stone Age as does Balochistan. Poorly educated young men and women go on to be under-performing adults that do not have the drive or the encouragement to get into the SME sector. It is not a ‘conspiracy’ and it is all fixable. Over to you, GoP.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 26th, 2017.

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