EDITORIAL: If breaking the barriers to non-traditional professions has not been easy for women in this male-dominated society, pursuing career paths in their chosen field of interest seems to be just as hard.
A joint study conducted by Gallup Pakistan and PRIDE, based on Labour Force Survey 2020-21 data, shows that out of 28,920 female engineering graduates (including those who had earned Ms, MPhil, or PhD degrees) only 28 percent were employed and 20.9 percent unemployed, apparently, due to entrenched gender bias in public and private sector companies.
However, 50.9 percent of the female engineering graduates opted to remain out of the labour market. Over all, only 3 in 10 have pursued professional careers.
This is such a waste of talent. Admission in engineering colleges/universities being highly competitive, candidates keen to work are elbowed out by those who don’t. Besides, in the public sector institutions each student’s education entails 5 million government subsidy.
Yet more than half of female graduates make no use of it. Like their peers who pass out from medical colleges, an overwhelming majorly, some 64.2 percent in the 99,900 household surveyed across the country the stay-at-home female engineers were found to be married.
Acquisition of professional education by women, hence, is generally attributed to a desire to secure better marriage prospects. That though has more to do with their spouses wish to control them. It seems the two organisations that have put out their analysis of the labour force survey couldn’t see the forest for the trees.
The Gallup Executive Director has been quoted as saying since trained and educated females are either unemployed or not interested in work, in a resource constrained country like Pakistan that “should be a source of concern for not just policymakers but also taxpayers whose money is going to waste.”
Director of PRIDE went as far as to urge the government to review its policy of seat allocations at least in the public sector engineering universities. In other words, shut the door on female candidates. These suggestions could not be more regressive.
The problem is rooted in our social and cultural environment. The present study, however, contains some positive signs. More and more women are becoming engineers.
The number of female engineering graduates in the 25-34 years age bracket, back in 2020-21, was 50.9 percent, much higher than those in the 34-44 years age group at mere 21.7 percent. This implies social attitudes towards them are steadily changing.
It should also mean that they are relatively freer to pursue professional careers. There is no contradiction between marriage and career. Many women have balanced highly demanding jobs with marriage.
Governments at the centre and in the provinces need to increase their participation in professional education, and incentivise them to take their due place in the fields of engineering and technology by encouraging employers to hire them.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2023