Gender Studies

Lecture 6
Part VI. Status of Women in
Pakistan
Status of Women’s health in Pakistan
Status of Women in Education
Women and Employment
Women and Law

“No nation can rise to the height of glory unless their women are side by side with them” – Muhammad Ali Jinnah
Status of Women in Pakistan
• Pakistan has adopted a number of key international commitments to gender
equality and women’s human rights – the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights, Beijing Platform for Action, the Convention on the Elimination of all
forms of Discrimination Against Women, and the Sustainable Development
Goals.
• National commitments in place include a National Policy for Development and
Empowerment of Women, Protection against Harassment of Women at
Workplace Act, Criminal Law (Amendment) (Offences in the name or pretext
of Honour) Act, Criminal Law (Amendment) (Offences Relating to Rape) and a
National Plan of Action on Human Rights. Local commitments adopted
include Gender Equality Policy Frameworks and Women’s Empowerment
Packages and Initiatives.
Global Gender Gap Report 2020
• Pakistan ranked 151 out of 153 countries on the Global Gender Gap Index Report 2020 index,
published by the World Economic Forum (WEF)
• The scorecard for the country places Pakistan at 150 in economic participation and opportunity,
143 in educational attainment, 149 in health and survival and 93 in political empowerment.
• A comparison of previous rankings shows that the overall ranking for Pakistan has drastically
slipped from 112 in 2006 to 151 in 2020.
• The report highlights that economic opportunities for women in Pakistan are limited with the
country only managing to bridge 32.7 per cent of the gap between men and women in the
workplace.
• In health and survival, the gap widened to 94.6pc, which means that women in the country do
not have the same access to healthcare as men.
• Among the seven South Asian countries included in the index, Pakistan charted at the very
bottom. Bangladesh ranked 50, followed by Nepal 101, Sri Lanka 102, India 112, Maldives 123,
and Bhutan 131.
Status of Women in Pakistan
• Demographic Background
• Men/women ratio: 48.8% females
• Social and Cultural Context:
• The status of women in Pakistan is not homogenous because of the interconnection of
gender with other forms of exclusion in the society.
• However, women’s situation vis-à-vis men is one of systemic subordination, determined
by patriarchy across classes, regions, and the rural/urban divide.
• An artificial divide between production and reproduction, created by the ideology of
sexual division of labor, has placed women in reproductive roles as mothers and wives
in the private sphere and men in a productive role as breadwinners in the public arena.
This has led to a low level of resource investment in women by the family and the State
• Thus, low investment in women’s human capital, compounded by the ideology of
purdah, negative social biases, and cultural practices; the concept of honor linked with
women’s sexuality; restrictions on women’s mobility; and the internalization of
patriarchy by women themselves, becomes, the basis for gender discrimination and
disparities in all spheres of life.
Status of Women’s Health in Pakistan
• Social and familial control over women’s sexuality, their economic dependence on men, and
restrictions on their mobility determine differential access of males and females to health
services
• Intra-household bias in food distribution leads to nutritional deficiencies among female
children
• Early marriages of girls, excessive childbearing, lack of control over their own bodies, and a
high level of illiteracy adversely affect women’s health
• Institutionalized gender bias within the health service delivery system in terms of lack of
female service providers, and neglect of women’s basic and reproductive health needs,
intensify women’s disadvantaged health status.
• In the health sector the focus has been on the provision of primary health care and basic
health facilities in rural areas. The other major initiative is of lady health workers (LHWs) to
provide basic health care including family planning to women at the grassroots level
• Other initiatives include the village-based family planning workers and extended
immunization programs, nutritional and child survival, cancer treatment, and increased
involvement of media in health education.
Status of Women’s Health in Pakistan
• Pakistan has one of the highest fertility rates in the region with an
average of 3.6 births per woman – Pakistan Demographic and Health
Survey (PDHS)
• The use of family planning among married women has stagnated
around 34% over the last five years -PDHS
• The under-5 mortality rate is 74deaths per 1,000 live births, a decline
from 89 deaths per 1,000 live births in 2012 to 13 -PDHS
• On average, 48.1 per cent of women and girls aged between 15 and 49
years in Pakistan have no say in decisions regarding their own health
care, but rates vary significantly by location, wealth and ethnicity – UN
Status of Women’s Economic Participation
in Pakistan
• An ILO report published in 2017, Pakistan’s Hidden Workers, highlighted the vulnerability of home-
based workers. The majority of them are women and they lack legal protections and access to
collective bargaining. Their wage rates are generally set by middlemen and they are ‘chronically and
significantly underpaid.’ Of those who attempted to negotiate better rates, 95 percent failed.
• Women’s engagement in multiple home-based economic activities leads to under-remuneration for
their work.
• Despite women’s legal rights to own and inherit property from their families, there are very few
women who have access and control over these resources.
• Commercial banks ignore women clients due to their preconceived views on women’s
creditworthiness because of their dependency on men for physical collateral, high transaction cost
of small loans, and difficulties in gaining information about a borrower’s reliability.
• Lack of education and skills forces many to concentrate either in the informal sector or secondary
sector of the segmented labor market
• Exploitative working conditions at the workplace, compounded by oppressive conditions at home
where women continue to take the sole responsibility for domestic work, overburdened them to
the detriment of their health.
Status of Women’s Economic Participation
in Pakistan
• 22% female labor force participation rate compared to 68% male participation in labor force
• The proportion of women who have received technical or vocational training is a low 11%
nationally; the majority in embroidery, knitting and sewing related with monthly incomes that
are below the minimum wage
• Only 15 per cent of the adult female population of the country possess active bank accounts.
• The growth in financial inclusion has been modest, with a mere increase from 7.7 percent in
2013 to 14 percent in 2017  at an annual growth rate of 1.23 percent. This is in stark contrast 
to the 50 percent target set for 2020 by the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) in it’s National
Financial Inclusion Strategy (NFIS).
• Despite increases in recent years, female labor force participation in Pakistan, at 25%, is well
below rates for countries with similar income levels. Even among women with high levels of
education, labor force participation lags: only around 25% of women with a university degree
in Pakistan are working.
UN Initiative to Support Economic
Participation of Women
• Women from marginalized social classes face multiple challenges and are often only
able to work from home. These women engaged in the informal sector of the
economy are called Home-Based Workers (HBWs).
• Of the estimated 20 million HBWs in Pakistan, 12 million are women. According to
UN Women’s Status Report, 2016 on Women’s Economic Participation and
Empowerment in Pakistan, women account for 65 per cent of the PKR 400 billion
(USD 2.8 billion) that HBWs contribute to Pakistan’s economy.
• However, most receive low wages and are denied legal protection and social security.
• To change this, UN Women Pakistan, with support from the Royal Norwegian
Embassy in Pakistan, initiated a three-year (2017 – 2020) project ‘Economic
Empowerment of Women Home-based Workers and Excluded Groups in Pakistan’.
Status of Women’s Education in Pakistan
• Pakistan was described as “among the world’s worst performing countries in education,” at the 2015 Oslo
Summit on Education and Development
• Thirty-two percent of primary school age girls are out of school in Pakistan, compared to 21 percent of
boys. (HRW report 2018)
• Only 13 percent of girls are still in school by ninth grade.
• In Balochistan, the province with the lowest percentage of educated women, as of 2014-15, 81 percent of
women had not completed primary school, compared to 52 percent of men.
• Reasons for the lack of access: Lack of state investment in education, high cost, poor quality, poverty, social
norms
• Harmful gender norms create economic incentives to prioritize boys’ education
• Child marriage is both a consequence and a cause of girls not attending school. In Pakistan, 21 percent of
girls marry before age 18
• The literacy rates may have risen generally; however, with the increase in population, the number of illiterate
Pakistanis has more than doubled, while the number of illiterate women has tripled.
• Strong gender disparities exist in educational attainment between rural and urban areas and among the four
provinces
Status of Women’s Education in Pakistan
• The State shall provide free and compulsory education to all children of the age of five to
sixteen years in such manner as may be determined by law. - Constitution of Pakistan
Article 25-A
• Pakistan is a signatory of UN Education for All Framework with considerable emphasis on
women’s education, eliminating gender disparities in primary, secondary and tertiary
education
• Overall literacy rate in the country stands at 58% with literacy rate of males at 70% and
females at 48%.
• Net enrollment rates however remain low for both girls and boys: almost 40% of girls
and 30% of boys ages 6-10 years are not enrolled in school; the figure jumps to 70% and
60% for not enrolled girls and boys ages 11-13 (middle school); and an even higher
percentage, 80% of girls and 70% of boys ages 14-15 years are not enrolled in high
school.
Legal Status of Women in Pakistan
• Article 34 of Constitution: Steps shall be taken to ensure full participation of
women in all spheres of national life
• Legislation in favor of women:
• Muslim Family Laws Ordinance (1961)
• Dowry and Bridal Gifts Restriction Act (1976)
• Protection of Women Act (2006)
• Protection against Harassment of Women at Workplace (2010)
• Prevention of Anti-women practices (2011)
• Acid Control and Acid Crime Prevention Act (2011)
• Domestic Violence Act (2012)
• Signatory of Convention against Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women
(CEDAW) – accession subject to provisions of Constitution
• Signatory to international treaties such as International Conference on Population and
Development and Millennium Development Goals; the Pakistan government is obliged to
achieve gender equality
Digital Status of Women in Pakistan
PART VIII. Gender Based
Violence
Defining Gender Based Violence
Theories of Violence against Women
Structural and Direct Forms of Violence
Strategies to Eliminate Violence against Women

“Only a radical transformation of relationship between men and women to one of full and equal partnership
will enable the world to meet the challenges of 21st Century” – Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action
Gender Based Violence
• Most social scientists assert that violence is a socially and culturally
learned behavior
• Gender based violence; Physical, verbal, emotional, sexual and visual
brutality that is inflicted disproportionately or exclusively on members
on one sex
• Violence against women; Gender based violence that results in, or is
likely to result in, physical, sexual or psychological harm or suffering to
women including threat of such acts, coercion or arbitrary deprivation
of liberty, whether occurring in public or private life
Theories of Violence Against
Women
The Psychiatric Model of Violence
• Psychopathology Theory; Individuals suffer from mental illness,
personality disorders and other dysfunctions that cause them to
engage in aggressive acts within the family
• Although a popular theory among psychiatrists and psychologists, no
particular mental disorder has been identified common to those who abuse
• Also, not every patient of mental illness engages in violent behavior
• Substance Abuse Theory; Drugs or Alcohol cause or contribute to
family violence
• Substances can impair judgment and lessen inhibitions
• Some authorities think that drugs and alcohol, are only used as an excuse for
violence as not everyone with a history of substance abuse engages in it
The Socio-Psychological Model of Violence
• Social Learning Theory; Integration of differential associations with differential
reinforcements so that people with whom one interacts are reinforcers of
behavior that results in learning both deviant and non deviant behavior
• Based on two important mechanisms of modelling and reinforcements
• Violence is not inherent, rather it is a learned behavior through experience or witnessing
it
• Used to explain the ‘intergenerational cycle of violence’
• Theory of Marital power; Those who lack power are more likely to use it
• Associated with men who lack power in marriage and then use violence as a result of it
• Resource Theory; Decision making power in family comes from the ownership
of resources: economic, financial
• So if someone has more resources at disposal, they will be less likely to use violence as a
form of control
The Socio-Psychological Model of Violence
• The Exchange/Social Control Theory; Actions are based on a cost-benefit
analysis, violence occurs when the benefit exceeds the cost
• Idea of rewards and punishments
• Privacy of family and lack of intervention decreases the costs of violence
• The Frustration-Aggression Theory; People become aggressive towards
what hinders them from achieving their goals
• Traumatic Bonding Theory; Relationship is characterized by a power
imbalance and intermittent episodes of abuse
• Overtime one becomes more dominant and other becomes more subjugated
• Abuse is followed by remorse
• Also known as the Stockholm Syndrome; Victim expresses empathy and sympathy
and have positive feelings for the batterer
 • Culture of Violence Theory; Subcultures in favor of patriarchal dominance and
violent behavior develop norms and values permitting the use of violence
The Socio-Cultural
• Based on premise that violenceModel
with the lower income social class
of Violence
is unevenly distributed in society and mostly associated

• However, theory doesn’t explain how does violence start in the subculture in the first
place
• Social Conflict Theory; Threatened bonds, unacknowledged alienation and
shame generate violence in family
• Gender and Masculinity Theory; Gender socialization encourages boys to
reject what is feminine and adopt masculinity
• They apply ‘hegemonic masculinity’ ideals over women while women adopt their
subjugated role attributed to them through gendered division of labour
• Marginalized men more likely to resort to violence to construct a publicly aggressive
form of masculinity
Forms of Gender Based Violence
• Direct Violence; an actor or perpetrator can clearly be identified
• Physical violence is the intentional use of physical force, used with the potential for causing harm, injury,
disability or death. 
• Sexual violence involves a sexual act being committed or attempted against a victim who has not freely
given consent, or who is unable to consent or refuse
• Psychological violence (also referred to as emotional or mental abuse) includes verbal and non-verbal
communication used with the intent to harm another person mentally or emotionally, or to exert control
over another person.
• Economic violence aims to control economic power of another person through restricting access to
financial resources, education or labor market, or not complying with economic responsibilities
• Violence in close relationships – Intimate Partner Violence
• Harmful practices – Child Marriages, Female Genital Mutilation
• Focus must be shifted from actor oriented perspective to structure oriented perspective
• Indirect/ Structural Violence; Violence is rather built into the structures, appearing as unequal
power relations and, consequently, as unequal opportunities.
• “Any form of structural inequality or institutional discrimination that maintains a woman in a subordinate
position whether physical or ideological to other people in family, household or community”
• Norms, attitudes, stereotypes around gender in general
Forms of Gender Based Violence
• Domestic Violence
• Intimate Partner Violence, Patriarchy, Poverty, Illiteracy
• Difficult to penalize as it is considered a private matter of family
• Very low reported cases
• Critical to recognize domestic violence as a violation of women rights to curb it
(Sindh and Baluchistan recognize DV as a crime)
• Sexual Harassment
• Unwelcome sexual advances and other verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature
• Bride Burning
• Acid Attacks
• Physical, psychological trauma, Lifelong bodily disfigurement
• Legislation should also include rehabilitation process
Forms of Gender Based Violence
• Rape Attacks
• Patriarchy, Lack of political will, Lack of awareness about women’s rights, absence
of adequate laws, all male structure of panchayat and jirgas that act as a parallel
justice system, lack of medico-legal resources, religious and cultural values
• Trafficking of women and girls
• Honor Killings
• Unlawful killing of a woman for her actual or perceived morally or mentally
impure behavior
• Girls as compensation; Swara, Vani, Sung Chatti, Irjaee
• Forced and Child Marriages
• Denial of rights of inheritance
Forms of violence in Pakistan and Laws
against them
• Protection of Women Act 2006 – Amendments in Zina Ordinance 1979 and
removal of offence of rape from its ambit
• The law meant women would not be jailed if they were unable to prove rape, and
allows rape to be proved on grounds other than witnesses, such as forensics and
DNA evidence
• Acid Control and Crime Prevention Act 2011 – Amendment in PPC and
CRPC to punish perpetrators of acid crimes whereby punishment can be
extended up to life imprisonment and fine no less than Rs 500,000
• Protection Against Harassment of Women at Workplace 2010 – Applies to
workplace and public spaces making sexual harassment a criminal offence
• Requires all public and private organizations to adopt an internal code of conduct
and set up an Inquiry Committee for investigation
Forms of violence in Pakistan and Laws
against them
• Prevention of Anti Women Practices 2011 – Prohibits oppressive and
discriminatory customs practiced towards women that are against their dignity,
violating human rights and contrary to Islamic injunctions
• Giving a female in marriage under Swara/Vani, depriving women from inheriting
property, forced marriages, marriage with Holy Quran
• Criminal Law (Amendment) (Offences in the name or pretext of Honour) Act,
2016.
• Removed the loophole in law whereby families could forgive the perpetrator and end the
case in the court of law
• Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act 2016
• Under Section 22, punishment of up to seven years or fine up to 5 million rupees or both
has been prescribed for the offence of producing, distributing or transmitting
pornographic material showing underage girls engaged in sexually explicit conduct.
How to combat violence?
• General Measures against violence
• Punishment; Deterrence theorists, neoclassical theorists portray humans as
pleasure seeking, pain avoiding creatures who will only commit crime if
pleasure is greater than risk of pain. The idea is that punishing offenders will
lead to general and specific deterrence
• Education; Need for changing people’s mindset, informal social control is
always better than formal social control
• Media; Strong agent of socialization and formation of public opinion
How to combat violence?
• Report by Population Services International suggests specific
measures against GBV
• The evidence suggests that the most effective approaches are gender
transformative, in that they reach beyond the attitudes and behaviors
of those directly involved (perpetrators and survivors) to challenge
harmful societal norms and promote women’s status more generally.
• The strongest interventions work across all levels of the ecological
model – individual, interpersonal, service, community, and policy
How to combat violence?
• Measures at Individual and Personal level
• Empowering women; direct engagement with women to make them aware of
the different forms of GBV and recognize when it is happening to them
• It is essential that women know their rights and where to access support if they are
experiencing or have questions about GBV
• A critical first step, therefore, is raising awareness among women and their communities of
what GBV is; its impacts on individuals, families, and communities; and options for support
and safety
• These messages must be embedded within broader interventions to empower women,
which may relate to their rights to choose if, when, and with whom to marry and have
children; school enrollment; and economic empowerment
• More active role employed by
• NGOs – Rights based program
• Political Parties – New legislation
• Media – Better role in gender socialization and reducing objectification
• Religious leaders – Easy grass roots access
How to combat violence?
• Measures at Individual and Personal level
• Engaging Boys and Men; In recent years, interventions have shifted from
targeting men as potential perpetrators of violence to engaging them as
partners in GBV prevention
• Effective programs recognize that preventing future instances of violence requires
transforming social constructions of masculinity that have historically nurtured male
dominance.
• Many men want to prevent GBV. They may have experienced it themselves or witnessed
it happening to their family members; they may want to change the norms that pressure
them to express masculinity in certain ways, and they may want to alleviate women’s
suspicions of them as potential perpetrators.
How to combat violence?
• Facilitating Dialogue b/w men and women
• Interventions should seek to challenge men and women’s understanding of their
own masculinity or femininity and their roles in relationships and in society.
• Service Level; Direct support to women who have been a victim of GBV
• A first-line response helps mitigate the consequences of violence that cannot be
immediately addressed, such as depression and substance abuse, and connect
women to needed legal, social, and psychiatric support
• Community Level; Community mobilization and advocacy initiatives have
increased recognition of GBV as a human rights violation and spurred the
development of programs that address underlying factors in the community,
rather than just focusing on behavior change at the individual level
• Policy Level; The number of countries with domestic violence legislation grew
from four in 1993 to 76 by 2013
• Policies are necessary to provide survivors with legal recourse when they have
experienced GBV.
Public Hangings – An Effective
Punishment?
• Data does not confirm death penalty as an effective deterrent
• Will lead to even lesser reporting in case of known perpetrators
• More chances of murder/ increased violence
• Burden of tough laws falls on the weak only
What is effective punishment?
• Certainty in implementation of law in letter and spirit
• Reformation better than retribution
• Proactive policing and surveillance rather than reactive measures