Women Empowerment, Gender Equality Important For Economic Future

Women Empowerment, Gender Equality important for economic future

Women constitute about 49 % of country's population while Vision 2025 includes Gender Equality and Women Development as an important element and recognizes as key contributor to the country's economic future.

ISLAMABAD, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 26th Apr, 2018 ) :Women constitute about 49 % of country's population while Vision 2025 includes Gender Equality and Women Development as an important element and recognizes as key contributor to the country's economic future.

According to the Economic Survey of Pakistan 2017-18 launched by Adviser to the Prime Minister on Finance, Miftah Ismail here Thursday said that Pakistan is committed to meet the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) including the Goal-5 i.e.

Gender Equality and Ending all forms of discrimination against women and girls. He said that the government has internalized Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as National Goals. The participation of women in the development process of Pakistan has been recognized as an important element.

The indicators of women development are gradually improving but not yet sufficient to achieve gender parity that remains elusive in school enrollment, labour market share and in decision making arena, he added.

The government, he said, is well aware of this issue and is making sincere efforts to provide an enabling environment and equal opportunities to women so that they may enjoy the benefits of economic growth, prosperity and social development.

Miftah claimed that initiatives have been taken for women development and empowerment. He said as a result, women's employment is encouraged and the government has fixed 10 percent quota for women in public sector employment; Punjab raised this to 15 percent and in Sindh job quota for women in police has been increased from 2 percent to 5 percent.

He said that 184 posts for women have been created at different tiers, and 70 percent of jobs in primary education have been earmarked for women. He informed that Punjab Fair Representation of Women Act 2014 ensures 33 percent representation of women on all boards of statutory bodies, public sector companies etc, adding women participation in Prime Minister's Youth Loan Schemes was encouraged by 50 percent.

Miftah said Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP), a flagship social protection programme of the government is providing social assistance to women. BISP also gives interest free financial assistance to the female beneficiaries under their Waseela-e-Haq (Micro-Finance) programme to start their own business, he said.

He said Vocational and technical training of one month to a year's duration, to the female beneficiary or her nominee has been provided under the Waseela-e-Rozgar (Technical & VocationalTraining) programme (target is 150,000 beneficiaries) with Rs 6,000 monthly stipend for each trainee.

Waseela �e-Sehat (Life and Health Insurance) programme subsidized health care for beneficiaries and life insurance to one million women while the premium is paid by the program, he added. Waseela-e-Taleem (Primary Education), he said, encourage the beneficiaries families to send their children of 5-12 years age to school through a co-responsibility cash transfer of Rs 200/- per child (limit to three per family).

He said that the government has taken measures to ensure women's rights as envisaged in the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). Acknowledging 'Honor Killings" as a critical problem, he said, the present government has enacted effective legislation to address women's issues with a view to safeguard their rights i.e.

"Criminal Law (Amendment) Offences in the name or pretext of Honour Act, 2016" and "Criminal Law (Amendment) Offences Relating to Rape, Act 2016". He claimed that several institutions have contributed in securing and promoting women's rights and National Commission on the Status of Women (NCSW) is one of them.

He said the NCSW has prepared a comprehensive roadmap defining goals, priorities and strategies for empowerment of the women with special focus on issues of home based/informal sector workers and their inclusion in the labour force, affirmative actions for reservation of quotas in the government jobs including minority communities and initiatives for legislation.

He said that the present government has taken various steps to achieve women's empowerment through awareness raising campaigns and allocation of budget. Funds amounting to Rs 254 million, he said, have been allocated in PSDP 2017-18 to four new development schemes of Ministry of Human Rights including Implementation of Action Plan for Human Rights in Pakistan, Institutional strengthening of Ministry of Human Rights, Acquisition of land for construction of building for National Institute of Human Rights and Construction of working women hostel in Islamabad.

He further said that in addition to that an amount of Rs 52 million has been allocated for two ongoing development schemes of Ministry of Human Rights i.e. Helpline for legal advice on violations of human rights with an allocation of Rs 25 million and establishment of National Institute of Human Rights with an allocation of Rs 27 million.

He said the government in order to promote innovative ideas based on business plans leading to solution of social problems has established a Centre for Social Entrepreneurship at a cost of Rs178.43 million focusing on women entrepreneurship.

The project is unique in nature for addressing social issues through innovative business plans and women are especially encouraged to grow as an entrepreneur, he added. He said Prime Minister's Youth Programme is a revolutionary programme of the government for the socio-economic development of youth to combat unemployment in the country.

The main objective, he said, of the scheme is to enable youth and poor segments of population, to get good employment opportunities, secure economic empowerment, acquire skills to improve their livelihood, have access to higher education and IT tools and provision of opportunity on-the-job training/internship for young graduates to improve the probability of getting a productive job.