Widening gender gap

One would think that with the economic development and social progress over the years, issues like gender inequality would gradually become less stark; but that’s not happening in Pakistan. The World Economic Forum’s latest “Global Gender Gap Report” shows Pakistan at the bottom of the index, just above Syria. Pakistan’s position in the index has been anything but satisfactory in the last few years, and its position has been faltering year after year since the first year of the report in 2006.

The purpose of the Global Gender Gap Index is to provide a framework to measure gender-based disparities in different countries with progress calibrated across four key areas: economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, health and safety, and political empowerment.

South Asia with an average remaining gender gap of around 34 percent is the second-lowest scoring region on this year’s index, ahead of the Middle East and North Africa and behind Sub-Saharan Africa. Bangladesh has consolidated its position further by remaining the top performer of the region with significant improvement in scores for the economic opportunity and participation sub index; whereas Maldives that ranks second has fully closed its educational attainment gender gap with improvement across the political empowerment sub index as well.

India has seen its performance go down on the index because of widening of its gender gaps in political empowerment sub index as well as in healthy life expectancy and basic literacy. However, it has successfully closed its primary and secondary education enrolment gender gaps for the second year running, and nearly closed its tertiary education gender gap for the first time.

Sri Lanka has fully closed its health and survival gender gap, but has widened its gender gap in wage equality for similar work even though it has seen a modest increase in parity in earned income. Nepal too witnessed a close of gender gap on tertiary education enrolment and a significant improvement in women’s share in estimated earned income.

What is Pakistan’s progress? While the country has recorded some progress on closing the basic literacy gender gap and women labour force participation, the improvements have been largely overshadowed by astounding reversals on estimated earned income and a significant re-opening of the country’s enrolment in tertiary education gender gap according to the report. Yes, you heard it right; looks like Pakistani has taken a step back.

In Pakistan the human capital remains underutilised, and women empowerment like leadership roles, economic independence and employment opportunities still remain a key challenge. Women continue to be side-lined from mainstream economic and political activities despite the equal rights under the Constitution. Labour force participation for women stands at around 25 percent, whereas the estimated earned income of their counterparts (men), according to the report, is more than seven times higher. Women to men ratio for representation as senior officials and managers are 3 to every 97 males.

These are just a few indicators showing the abysmal gender diversity in the country. A lot has to be done. Hopefully, the policymakers will find time to take a hint from the WEF’s latest gender study!