Women's Day: Gender Gap in Education Narrowing in Pakistan

Women's education, literacy and labor force participation levels remain low in Pakistan but the gender gap is declining in terms of literacy rates and mean years of schooling, according to Pakistan Labor Force Survey 2017-18.  There is about one year gap between men and women in terms of education attained. On average, a Pakistani male born after 1995 will leave school in 8th grade. A female born at the same time will leave in 7th grade.

At a recent Islamabad event organized as part of the World Bank's "Girls Learn, Women Earn" campaign,   Mr. Illango Patchamuthu, World Bank Country Director for Pakistan, said increasing years of schooling helps women become more productive members of society.






Pakistan Labor Force survey provides information on the country's labor force characteristics. It is based on a representative sample of 43,361 urban and rural households. For this purpose, total sample size is evenly distributed into four sub samples, each to be enumerated in a given quarter.

Mean Years of Schooling in Pakistan. Source: Labor Force Survey 2017-18


As of 2017-18, the overall literacy rate in Pakistan is 62.3%. Among males above age 10, 72.5% are literate. Females in the same age group are at 51.8%, trailing 20.7% behind their male counterparts. The percentage of women participating in the labor force is 24.9 as compared to 82.7 for men.

History of Literacy in Pakistan


Educational Attainment in Pakistan. Source: Labor Force Survey 2017-18

At a recent Islamabad event organized as part of the World Bank's   "Girls Learn, Women Earn" campaign,   Mr. Illango Patchamuthu, World Bank Country Director for Pakistan, said increasing years of schooling helps women become more productive members of society. He said: “Every additional year of schooling for a girl increases her future earnings by up to 10%. Pakistan can use the untapped economic potential of women in the workforce and estimates indicate this can boost the economy by up to 30%, by empowering women and girls to expand their skills, access to information, mobility, and access to finance and assets.”

Increasing Years of Schooling Leads to Women Having Fewer Babies

Prime Minister Imran Khan's government has launched two programs with the aim of particularly helping underprivileged women: Ehsaas and Kifaalat. These programs are headed by Dr. Sania Nishtar, a highly accomplished woman named special assistant to the prime minister. Speaking at  "Girls Learn, Women Earn", Dr. Nishtar said:

“Government of Pakistan’s Ehsaas program has a very serious intent to drive forward the agenda of women empowerment. Ehsaas stringently follows fifty percent rule across the board for women inclusion in all Ehsaas initiatives including interest free loans, scholarships and asset transfers".

 "Likewise, Kafaalat that has recently been launched by the Prime Minister will ensure financial and digital inclusion of 7 million disadvantaged women across Pakistan who will now benefit from the monthly stipend of Rs. 2,000 along with access to bank accounts and affordable smart phones,” she added.

https://youtu.be/G2qZuAub7rE



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Comments

Riaz Haq said…
Pakistan launches national socioeconomic registry

https://tribune.com.pk/story/2337707/Pakistan-launches-national-socioeconomic-registry

The World Bank (WB) also congratulated Ehsaas for completing South Asia’s first digital National Socio-Economic Registry survey.

WB Country Director Najy Benhassine, while speaking at the ceremony, said, “I congratulate the Government of Pakistan and Ehsaas on achieving this historical milestone.” He said that the bank feels proud to be the technical partner in this “game-changer survey”.

“This is not just Pakistan’s but also South Asia’s first digitally-enabled socioeconomic census. It will be really transformative that the registry will now facilitate data sharing for social protection programmes of the federal government, provinces, government departments and development agencies,” he added.

Director-General Naveed Akbar outlined the design, end-to-end digital methodology, approaches and rigorous transparency measures embedded in the execution of the survey.

UNRC Resident Coordinator Julien Harneis, Secretary Ismat Tahira, and senior representatives of government departments, Asian Development Bank (ADB), development partners and media professionals also attended the event.

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Ehsaas, the flagship welfare programme of the government, successfully accomplished a countrywide National Socioeconomic Registry Survey which includes households’ information in terms of geographic data, demographics, socioeconomic status, education, health, disability, employment, energy consumption, assets, communications, agri-landholdings, WASH, livestock, etc.

Ehsaas conducted a door-to-door computer-aided survey all across the country to gather data about the socioeconomic status of households. In conclusion, this will be the most reliable dataset for the use of public sector institutions, think tanks and development agencies for designing social protection and poverty alleviation programmes.

The data sharing will be steered through the Cognitive API Architecture approach. There will be two-way data sharing; agencies with whom data will be shared will also be required to update the registry with their own information.

Addressing the launch ceremony, Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Poverty Alleviation and Social Protection Senator Dr Sania Nishtar said, “Part of Ehsaas strategy, we have just concluded a new National Socioeconomic Registry of 34.41 million households. We did various validations of the data to precisely identify the real poor.”

“With the readiness of survey, we are now transiting from static to dynamic registry to make it more targeting efficient and to avoid possible inclusion and exclusion errors occurred due to continuous change in socioeconomic status of the households especially due to demographic change,” the SAPM said. “Tehsil-level Ehsaas Registration Desks have also been opened all over the country to keep the national socioeconomic registry dynamic.”
Riaz Haq said…
Pakistan Labor Force Survey 2020-21



It (unemployment) goes down from (6.9%) in 2018-19 to (6.3%) in the LFS 2020-21. Decrease is observed both in case of males (5.9%, 5.5%) and females (10.0%, 8.9%). Generally the unemployment rate in females is more pronounced as compared to males during the comparative period. Area- wise disaggregated figures indicate that unemployment rate goes down both in urban (7.9%, 7.3%) and in rural areas (6.4%, 5.8%) Comparative figures suggest significant decrease in rural males (5.5%, 5.1%) and females (8.5%, 7.4%) and in urban male (6.5%, 6.0%) and urban females (17.1%, 16.4%). 



https://www.pbs.gov.pk/sites/default/files/labour_force/publications/lfs2020_21/LFS_2020-21_Report.pdf

Comparative surveys estimates indicate changes in the employment shares. Decrease is observed in agriculture/forestry/hunting & fishing (39.2%, 37.4%), wholesale & retail trade (14.5%, 14.4%) and other category (2.2%, 1.5%) while increase is noted in construction (8.0%, 9.5%) and Community/social & personal services (14.9%, 16.0%). Manufacturing (15.0%, 14.9%) and transport storage & communication (6.2%, 6.2%) remain steady during the comparative periods.

Riaz Haq said…
The average expected years of schooling in Pakistan is 8.5 years. In comparison it is 11.2 years in Bangladesh and 12.3 years in India. Pakistan has performed poorly even on inequality adjusted human development, as well as gender development and equality compared with the regional countries.

https://www.dawn.com/news/1522407#:~:text=The%20average%20expected%20years%20of,compared%20with%20the%20regional%20countries.

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