Laraib Nisar
Women though make more than fifty percent of Pakistani population, yet still are one of the most marginalized segment in the society. Considering Pakistan’s frail economy, women economic empowerment and increased participation in the economic domain is critical for Pakistan’s prosperity and affluence. But unfortunately, social and cultural barriers keep women out of the economic domain. Though Pakistan has very rich cultural and religious values, still they are ignored by all and sundry across the country, and people have come up with their own versions of these cultural values. Sadly, people’s version of these values is not much supportive of women empowerment and their working hand in hand with men for the prosperity of the country.
Gender-based discrimination has become an essential component of our culture. It is normalized to such an extent that it can be observed at all levels i.e. from a household, to schools, colleges, universities, firms, and even public and private workplaces. The way in which a boy child is raised is completely different from the way a girl child is raised. They are taught different values, even rules and regulations are different for children on the basis of their gender.
Girl children are taught to be submissive, they are trained to be good daughters, sisters, wives, and mothers, in the meanwhile they are made to give up their career oriented dreams and aspirations in most of the Pakistani households.
Moreover, women are not given the opportunity to decide for themselves. All decisions from minutest to major are made by males of the house as they are the bread-winners and hence the heads of the household. This has led to a specification in the fields that women can join e.g. education and healthcare sector have fairly high numbers of women, but business and entrepreneurship aren’t considered the right profession for women due to cultural barriers.
Additionally, the regularization of physical and emotional violence on women in our society, has made a large segment of women submit to the life they are living without questioning the behavior of their male counter parts and without asking for even their fundamental rights as human beings.
This system of discrimination and patriarchy has led to a surge in mental health problems in young females across the country. Problems like insecurity, inferiority complex, low self-esteem, depression, and other personality disorders have main streamed in the female population due to obvious reasons. It is predicted that if such cultural values impeding women’s way in pursuing their career goals aren’t altered, a pandemic of mental health problems might hit the female youth of the country, which makes a fairly large chunk of the over-all youth of the country.
It is high time for the people as well as the authorities to understand that the economic progress of Pakistan can only be achieved if women work hand in hand with men. The Government has already made several efforts to encourage women economic participation by introducing women-friendly economic services and policies, however, their implementation in true sense is possible only if people break all the cultural barriers, and all the house heads themselves encourage their daughters, sisters and wives to go out into the economic domain and achieve the most out of the opportunities created by the Government. Moreover, we as a society, not only need to properly train and educate our females, but also need to teach our males to respect and empower women in all ways possible.
The author Laraib Nisar is a Defense and Strategic Studies’ graduate, working as a Researcher at Center for Research and Security Studies (CRSS).
