KARACHI: Pakistan economy’s hidden potential worth $30 billion revealed.
Pakistan can add more than $30 billion to its GDP if it can improve paritybetween men and women, says reports on gender equality.
According to a 2018 report titled ‘The Power of Parity: Advancing Women’sEquality in the Asia Pacific’, released by McKinsey Global Institute (MGI),Pakistan will be able to add more than $30bn based on trends establishedthrough data from 2014 — equivalent to 7.1 per cent of Pakistan’s GDP.
The report noted that advancing women’s equality in those countries couldadd $4.5 trillion to their collective GDP annually by 2025, or a 12 percent increase over a business-as-usual GDP trajectory. This additional GDPwould be equivalent to adding an economy to the combined size of Germanyand Austria each year.
According to the survey, this significant boost in growth can be achievedif policymakers set out to increase the female labour force participation,the number of paid hours women work and raise women’s productivity inrelative terms to men by introducing more women to higher-productivitysectors.
Increasing the number of women working would account for 58 per cent ofthis opportunity to add $4.5tr to the global GDP, whereas 17 per cent and25 per cent would be added by the other two targets economies need to focuson.
Pakistan has a long way to go in improving parity. In comparison to itscounterparts in the region, the opportunities for Pakistan remain low. In2015 MGI said Pakistan is the worst in the region with regards to genderequality.
Pakistan ranks second highest with regard to gender inequality to physicalsecurity.
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According to the most recent Labor Force Survey 2017-2018, released by thePakistan Bureau of Statistics in 2019, the labor force participation rateis mere 20 per cent for women. Only 25.6 per cent of rural womenparticipate in the labour force, while only 11 per cent of urban womenparticipate in the labor force.
If we compare provinces, Punjab has the highest female participation rateat 26.5 per cent, while Balochistan has the lowest at 7.9 per cent.
Compared to the previous survey conducted for 2014-15, the proportion ofwomen working in manufacturing, construction, wholesale and retail trade,transport/ storage and personal services, and community social and personalservices, registered an increase; while the proportion of women inagriculture declined.
According to the 2019 Gallup Pakistan report titled ‘Wage Differentials inPakistan’, on an aggregate average, women earn roughly 40 per cent lessthan men; or to put it in another way, the average Pakistani woman is paidonly Rs600 for every Rs1000 paid to an average Pakistani man.
Out of the already weak number of women that are in the labour force,approximately only 0.1 per cent are employers in comparison with 1.7 percent of men who are employers.
