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Women in Workplace: Encouraging Gender Diversity in Pakistan
Muhammad Umer Khan
EMBA II
Lahore School of Economics
18th December, 2020
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Women in Workplace: Encouraging Gender Diversity in Pakistan
The success of any social movement should be measured at the mean and not the extreme.
Despite being an early adopter and electing a women head of state in Benazir Bhutto, the youngest
female Prime Minister of her time, Pakistan still has a long way to go in empowering women,
especially in workplaces. Women in Pakistan have come a long way from not being allowed to
study Aeronautical Engineering in local universities, due to lack of facilities catering to female
students, to taking to the skies at Mach speeds piloting fighter jets. Many barriers have been
shattered paving the way for women to enter traditional male dominated workplaces. Pakistan now
boasts female CEOs and managing directors in both public and private sector, entrepreneurs, cab
and truck drivers, social activist, thought leaders, mountain climbers, Nobel laureate, 3-star
lieutenant-general etc. Though, on the extreme, women have started to break the glass ceiling at
the top, a sustained collective effort is still required to ensure these effects are carried over to the
wider female populace because at the mean the situation remains dire.
Pakistan ranks 151 out of 153 countries ahead of only Iraq and Yemen on the Global Gender
Gap Index (Global Gender Gap Report , 2020) . According to a report from the International Labor
Organization, Pakistan has the worst gender pay gap (Global Wage Report 2018/19: What lies
behind gender pay gaps, 2018). It is not just a matter of access to education. Among women with
university degrees only 25% work outside of the home (Tanaka & Muzones , 2016). This is a
significant potential loss of productivity in economic growth and should be a target of future policy
decisions. Pakistan has doubled the rate of women participation during 1992 – 2014 (Quresh,
2019), but this rate remains significantly low when compared to economies in other countries with
similar income and resources. Therefore, Pakistan needs to encourage and increase its gender
diversity in the work place.
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Social and cultural norms and taboos that Pakistani women have to face in daily life are a
hindrance leading to low inclusion in the working sector. By adding women in certain working
areas, many organizational targets can be achieved that may be beneficial for strengthening the
standards of the organization. There are dozens of international researches, surveys and studies,
which substantiate the unlimited advantages of bringing women in the working sections and the
businesses. While global ventures have reported several gains after letting women take leadership
roles. Several enterprises in Pakistan are hesitant in letting the women take charge and are causing
a huge gender disparity in the business world (Sarfaraz, 2016). According to a report from
International Finance Corporation (IFC) and ACCA in 2010, 78% of KSE 100 index companies
do not have women on board. Only 13% have more than one woman on board and 18% with at
least one woman. It was found that a significant number of companies with female board members
