Pakistan ranks 120 among 144 countries in the human development report on rural women prepared by Gender Development Index (GDI) as women have limited access to productive resources and only a nominal role in important household decisions despite doing major work at home and performing numerous tasks outside the home as well.
According to various research papers and studies carried out by the national, international and non-governmental organisations, women fertility rate is 5.1 per women, maternal mortality rate is 500 per 100,000 live births, adult female literacy rate is 28.5 percent, female economic activity (more than 15 years of age) rate is only 36.3 percent; their share in earned income as compared to males is 33 percent.
One study says Pakistani women play a major role in agriculture production, livestock care and craft-related work in rural areas. They often devote more time to these tasks than men do. They participate in sowing, transplanting, weeding harvesting, and post-harvest operations such as threshing, drying, grinding, husking and storage in addition to household chores and care of their own children and elderly.
Various studies found that on average rural women spent 15 hours daily on different activities and household chorus. All these studies suggest that making education accessible for the females, especially in rural areas and provision of employment opportunities in public as well as in private sector would encourage them to participate in economic activities.
MICROCREDIT IN PAKISTAN: One study says that the micro-finance sector is in the initial stages of development. Three different types of institutions are involved in the service delivery of credit to the needy. These include specialised micro-finance Institutions (MFIs), including commercial banks, rural support programme and NGO micro-finance institutions.
According to the data of Pakistan Micro-finance Network (PMN) during the last four years the proportion of women savers increased from 30 percent to 34 percent. In 2002, the average female savings were Rs842 against male savings of Rs1,129. By the end of 2003 there were 71,595 individuals who took loans from specialised MFIs/banks among them 84.11 percent were females.
Similarly, the proportion of female borrowers in total borrowers from RSPs and NGO MFIs was 35.4 percent and 72.62 percent, respectively.
The studies say that the concept of micro-credit for women development is fairly new in Pakistan and it may be too early to examine its impact on their social status and empowerment.
However, based on the available data published by the PMN and PPAF case studies done by some NGOs and the assessment report of the Gallup Pakistan, it can be concluded that micro-credit is serving as an effective tool of women Empowerment.
THESE STUDIES MADE FIVE MAJOR CONCLUSIONS:
1. Limited role of rural women in household decision making.
2. Extremely low participation of rural women in labour market.
3. Rural women face extremely discriminatory wage rate in the informal sector.
4. Women contribute a significant amount in the economy if their housework is valued in monetary terms: Women spend a large portion of their time in household chores, which goes unnoticed and to-date there have been no attempts to measure their housework in monetary terms.
5. Micro-credit plays an important role in improving the social status of women: Despite being at transition stage, the role of micro-credit has been found very positive in empowering women in Pakistan.
The experiences of many NGOs and Rural Support Programmes indicate a significant and positive change in the social status of Pakistani rural women who obtained loan to generate income for their household.
Micro-credit has gained a lot of popularity as an empowerment tool during the last two decades. Empowerment is not a spontaneous phenomenon and neither is one that can be imposed from outside.
However, policy can certainly create an environment to facilitate and promote women empowerment. Some of the policy measures that can promote women empowerment are as follows:
-- Data and research (especially on working hours for women).
-- Labour laws for the informal sector (strict implementation of labour laws).
-- Investment in girls education and health; and
-- Comprehensive micro-credit programmes with broader outreach.