Women’s Higher Education in Pakistan: Increasing Access & Maximizing Efficacy, Stepping Stones Towards Women’s Empowerment

PROBLEM STATEMENT

Women’s empowerment in Pakistan is vital to maximizing the country’s social capital and thus, fueling economic development by encouraging more women to join the workforce. Higher education is a crucial point of intervention for women’s empowerment, given the growth of the sector (the number of girls attending university went from 15,000 in 1993 to over 430,000 in 2010) and its capacity to increase women’s self-esteem, awareness of legal rights, civic participation, and economic independence.  However, these positive indicators have yet to translate into women’s empowerment in the workforce: Only 16% of women are in the workforce (compared to 50% of men) and more women in rural areas (19%) work than women in urban areas (8%).  These numbers are more shocking in light of the fact that most universities are in urban areas, as are most upper-class, educated women, indicating that women who benefit from a college degree do not necessarily use it to join the workforce.

Aurat Foundation’s (AF) Gender Equity Program has started a number of supportive one-day trainings (in law, business, & leadership) for female university students to help them capitalize on these potential gains. Unfortunately, these short-term initiatives will not translate into long-term impacts, due to the pervasiveness of gender norms in the mindsets of female students; in Pakistan, merely raising female university students’ awareness of their legal rights and opportunities does not make them confident enough to take advantage of this knowledge. For example, one study found that over 70% of women in Pakistan attending university were aware of their legal rights to divorce and to inherit (much higher than awareness in the population overall), but around 50% of these women also thought that utilizing those rights would result in social isolation. This illustrates the need for long-term support programs for female university students, as well as efforts to expose them to professional opportunities, so that they become not only aware of their rights, but also comfortable utilizing them.

The women in need of support could be divided into three groups: 1) poorer women who have limited access to higher education (due to distance and cost), 2) women who leave Pakistan to work or pursue higher education in other countries, and 3) women who attend university in Pakistan and remain in the country without utilizing their education. Although support for each of the those groups is crucial, given your foundation’s resources and existing support programs, my recommendations are centered on the third group of women. The third group can be further subdivided into two sectors:

1. Women who do not wish to use their education for economic purposes, but rather see it as a means to increasing their social status.
2. Women who do wish to use their education to join the workforce or participate more actively in civil life are prevented from doing so by social norms.

Both subgroups are unable to use their education as a means of empowerment because they lack the 1) exposure to diverse opportunities (i.e. different jobs, etc.) and 2) support necessary to take advantage of them, given that they were raised in an environment that emphasized their role in the home, not their opportunities in the job market. While female university students desperately need this exposure and support, more also has to be done to reduce the stigma of women in the workforce; this requires programs that focus not only on female students, but on raising awareness in the students’ families as well. These programs could be offered at all of the major female and coed universities where AF has offices.