Skills, structural change and feminist policy

Can women achieve economic independence through skills alone when institutional inequalities and entrenched misogyny continue to stifle their progress?

When discussions turn to women's economic liberation, the conversation often begins with skills. It must also address the systems that determine whether women can use those skills, earn fairly, establish businesses and exercise economic choice. Training women without examining the barriers they encounter afterwards risks preparing them to enter systems that remain unequal.

As a medical doctor working across public health, gender and development, I have studied and taught health economics, financial planning and competing economic traditions, including Keynesian and neoliberal thought, at public and private universities. These fields are closely connected: taxation, income, employment and financial security shape people's health, opportunities and life chances. Yet the relationship between public health and economic policy remains insufficiently understood.

Professionals working across disciplines may find their expertise questioned when they do not fit conventional professional categories. Add gender and the often-dismissive label of activist, and women may have to work harder to ensure their arguments receive serious consideration. The familiar dismissal - feminist hain, badmizaj aur chirchiri hain - can become a convenient way of avoiding the substance of what they say.

My engagement with economic justice led me to publish A Tax Break for Economic Freedom? in 2010, with support from the German foundation FNF. The book challenged Pakistan's narrow approach to women's tax relief by bringing four often-stigmatised groups into the policy debate: divorced mothers, divorced women, disabled women, and never-married women above 40. It looked beyond widowhood, then a recognised basis for relief, to consider the economic vulnerabilities of women whose circumstances received less policy attention.

The argument was not that these groups had identical needs, or that tax concessions alone could overcome gender inequality. It was that women's economic circumstances are diverse, and public policy must recognise that diversity. Targeted tax relief, alongside other measures, can help ease economic burdens, make doing business more feasible and support women's economic freedom. Taxation is not merely a means of collecting revenue; it is also a policy instrument with implications for economic justice.

This principle remains central to the discussion of women's skills and entrepreneurship. A woman may complete business training and still struggle to obtain finance, navigate administrative procedures, travel safely, balance unequal care responsibilities or compete on fair terms. Skills are necessary, but they cannot independently resolve structural barriers. Visibility is not safety, participation is not necessarily empowerment, and training is not economic independence if the conditions for success remain out of reach.

Women without influential surnames, male patronage or privileged access to decision-makers should be able to establish and run businesses on the strength of their capabilities and enterprise. Economic prospects should not depend on personal networks or conformity to social expectations.

There are practical ways to move in this direction. Gender-equality benchmarks within institutional and sectoral mandates can translate broad commitments into operational responsibilities. Advancing gender equality requires multisectoral and intersectoral coordination. Institutions such as land revenue authorities, FBR and SECP can use their digital data systems to help inform more equitable economic policies. Reliable data can support evidence-informed decisions that recognise women's differing economic circumstances.

These issues deserve sustained attention in Parliament, the Planning Commission, chambers of commerce and industry, and the institutions that shape fiscal and economic policy. Advocacy does not transform established hierarchies overnight, nor does a well-argued proposal automatically become policy. But sustained engagement can create space for new questions, better evidence and more inclusive decisions.

My interest in this work also has roots in civic entrepreneurship. Founded by Dr Tariq Banuri, SDPI first sparked my interest, as a young professional, in the non-profit sector. That interest later led me to co-found an organisation with my late husband. During my years of building and leading it, I integrated civic entrepreneurship into its work, a departure from the business-as-usual model of conventional NGOs at the time.

Among the initiatives that attracted resistance from sections of Islamabad's elite was the creation of a gallery for artisans. Its purpose was to bring the work of otherwise invisible workers into view and reduce their dependence on exploitative middlemen. This was not simply a cultural exercise; it was an attempt to improve their economic position. Those who challenge established interests do pay a price for non-conformity. Those who continue this work must remain conscious of its social, political and personal costs without allowing those costs to dictate the limits of what they attempt. I no longer have any association with the organisation I co-founded and led; my connection to it is part of my professional history.

The 29th Sustainable Development Conference, being organised by SDPI from 2–5 November 2026 under Dr Abid Suleri's leadership, will provide another opportunity to exchange these ideas.

Structural feminism shifts the focus from women's individual capacities to the procedures and power relations shaping their economic choices. Rather than celebrating women who overcome barriers, it asks why those barriers persist.

Training can open a door, but can women access resources, earn fairly, establish businesses and make independent economic choices when the systems they enter remain unequal? And who will train men to challenge male-dominated hierarchies and change the institutional practices that sustain them? Why must women bear the burden of adapting to systems that constrain them?

Women do not need to be trained endlessly to navigate unequal systems. Those systems must become equitable enough for women to succeed. That is the transformation we must make: from equipping women to cope with inequality to changing the conditions that reproduce it.