The Untapped GDP: Why Gender is Pakistan’s Missing Growth Strategy
Pakistan is searching for its next engine of economic growth.
Governments pursue higher exports, foreign direct investment, industrial expansion, technological innovation, and fiscal reform. Policymakers debate taxation, productivity, competitiveness, and macroeconomic stability. Every economic strategy ultimately seeks the same objective: sustainable and inclusive growth.
Yet one of Pakistan’s largest economic assets rarely features in these discussions.
Not because it does not exist.
But because it has never been recognised as an economic resource.
It exists in millions of women whose education, skills, enterprise, creativity, and professional potential remain significantly underutilised.
This is often framed as a question of gender equality.
It is equally, and perhaps more fundamentally, a question of economics.
No economy can consistently underutilise half of its available talent and expect to realise its full productive potential. According to the World Bank’s latest labour market estimates, only about 24 percent of Pakistani women aged 15 and above participate in the labour force, compared with around 80 percent of men, placing Pakistan among the countries with the widest gender gaps in economic participation
The question is not simply whether women should participate more actively in economic life. It is whether Pakistan can afford to leave such a substantial share of its economic potential untapped.
Growth begins with people
Economic debates frequently focus on physical capital—roads, power plants, industrial zones, ports, and technology. These investments are indispensable, but infrastructure alone does not create prosperity.
People do.
Investment requires entrepreneurs. Technology requires innovators. Factories require skilled workers. Exports require productive enterprises.
Infrastructure creates opportunity, but people create value.
The world’s most competitive economies recognise that sustained growth depends as much on workforce participation and skills as on infrastructure.
Human capital is not merely another input into the economy. It is the source from which every other form of economic value is created.
The economic cost of exclusion
Economists often describe opportunity cost as the value lost when available resources remain underutilised.
The same principle applies to labour markets.
When women face barriers to education, employment, entrepreneurship, finance, or leadership, the economy loses far more than individual incomes. It loses productivity, innovation, investment, tax revenues, business creation, and long-term growth.
Every educated woman unable to enter productive employment represents human-capital investment yielding only a fraction of its return. Every entrepreneur unable to obtain finance represents businesses never created. Every professional unable to contribute represents productivity that never materialises.
No private company would deliberately leave half of its productive assets idle while expecting higher returns.
Nations should not expect different outcomes.
The World Bank estimates that raising women’s economic participation could generate substantial long-term gains in productivity and national income.
The global economic shift
Over the past decades, an important shift has taken place in economic policymaking.
Women’s economic participation is no longer viewed through the lens of welfare or equality.
It is increasingly viewed through the lens of growth.
Countries have adopted different approaches according to their own circumstances. The Nordic economies have invested in childcare and family policies to sustain labour-force participation. Canada has integrated gender analysis into fiscal decision-making. Bangladesh demonstrated how women’s employment can transform export competitiveness. Singapore and South Korea increasingly view higher female labour-force participation as essential to addressing demographic and productivity challenges.
Although policies differ, the underlying economics remain similar.
Growth accelerates when talent is utilised rather than excluded.
The World Bank notes that improving women’s participation in the economy is not only a question of equity but also one of stronger productivity and higher long-term economic growth. Similar conclusions have been reached by the IMF and OECD both of which increasingly regard higher female labour-force participation as a macroeconomic growth imperative rather than solely a social objective.
Beyond welfare: investing in participation
Pakistan has made important investments in social protection, and such programmes remain essential for supporting vulnerable households.
Yet welfare and economic participation pursue different objectives.
One protects people from hardship.
The other enables them to create prosperity.
The transition from protection to participation requires investment in quality education, marketable skills, digital inclusion, childcare, safe public transport, healthcare, entrepreneurship, and access to finance.
These are not merely social expenditures; they are investments in productive capacity.
Like highways that connect markets, policies enabling greater workforce participation strengthen the economy’s growth potential.
Beyond gender-responsive budgeting
Gender-responsive budgeting is often misunderstood.
It does not mean creating separate budgets for women or diverting resources from other priorities.
It simply asks whether public expenditure expands people’s ability to participate productively in the economy.
Investment in girls’ education strengthens tomorrow’s workforce. Reliable transport expands labour mobility. Affordable childcare enables parents to remain economically active. Access to finance supports entrepreneurship. Digital infrastructure creates new opportunities for employment and business.
Viewed through this lens, gender-responsive budgeting is not a welfare exercise.
It is an investment strategy.
Gender-responsive budgeting is now an established public-finance tool used by many countries to assess how budget decisions influence economic participation and long-term development outcomes.
Pakistan’s missing growth lens
Pakistan rightly seeks higher exports, greater investment, stronger competitiveness, industrial modernisation, and technological advancement.
Each of these objectives remains essential.
Yet one of the country’s largest untapped economic assets already exists.
Pakistan has invested steadily in expanding girls’ education over recent decades. The challenge today is no longer access to education alone, but ensuring that educational gains translate into productive employment, entrepreneurship, innovation, and leadership across the economy.
Pakistan cannot continue investing in education while accepting that a substantial proportion of its skilled population remains outside productive economic activity.
No serious growth strategy can afford to ignore such a significant source of economic potential.
The untapped GDP
Gross Domestic Product is ultimately created by people.
Every skilled worker unable to contribute, every entrepreneur unable to build a business, and every educated professional excluded from productive employment reduces the economy’s output.
The untapped GDP is therefore not an abstract statistic.
It is the unrealised productive potential of millions of Pakistanis whose talents remain only partially utilised.
Unlocking that potential is not simply a matter of inclusion.
It is a matter of economic strategy.
Half the economy left behind
Pakistan’s broader economic challenge extends beyond stabilising public finances or increasing tax revenues.
It is about building a more productive economy.
Prosperity depends upon expanding opportunity, strengthening productivity, encouraging innovation, and enabling every capable citizen to contribute to national growth.
Pakistan frequently asks where its next engine of economic growth will come from.
The answer usually points towards exports, investment, technology, or natural resources.
Each will remain indispensable.
But perhaps the country’s greatest untapped economic resource has never been waiting beneath the ground or beyond its borders.
Pakistan’s untapped GDP has been here all along—in the unrealised productive potential of millions of women whose talents remain underutilised. Unlocking that potential is not simply a matter of inclusion; it is one of the country’s most important economic growth strategies.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2026
The writer is (PhD): is a former Add. Secretary-Executive Director General Board of Investment, Prime Minister’s Office, with extensive experience in investment policy, public governance, and corporate law. Email: [email protected]
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