Women Teaching Women: THE STATUS OF WOMEN IN PAKISTAN

Women Teaching Women: THE STATUS OF WOMEN IN PAKISTAN: The business environment for women in Pakistan reflects the complex interplay of many factors. These factors basically fall ...

THE STATUS OF WOMEN IN PAKISTAN

The business environment for women in Pakistan reflects the complex interplay of many factors.  These factors basically fall into two categories: the first is made up of social, cultural, traditional and religious elements that are anchored in the patriarchal culture and clearly manifests in the lower status of women. The second category is the status that the constitution dictates in policy documents, regulatory arrangements and institutional mechanisms relegating women to a lower status.

The regulatory environment does not generally discriminate against women, but even well intentioned provisions can sometimes result in negative discrimination. An example would be the highly skewed labor structure for the apparel industry in Pakistan. Employment figures show that about 90% of workers in this sector are male. This is exactly opposite to the situation in other South Asian countries where 90% of workers in the apparel industry are women. The fact that labor laws in Pakistan restrict the employment of women after 7 p.m. explain the difference. The long hours often required in this industry provide a disincentive to employ women.

In Pakistan, as in many other developing countries, women are handicapped in society. They face many challenges because they do not have the same opportunities as men. Not only are they deprived of financial resources but they also lack access to basic needs such as education, health, clean drinking water and proper sanitation. Limited access to the essentials of life undermines their capabilities, limits their ability to secure gainful employment, and results in income, poverty and social exclusion. Their ambitions and aspirations are suppressed.

The business environment for women in Pakistan is typically like this:

·       Most women who run businesses do so by operating them from home, and financial matters are taken care of by male family members.

·       Women entrepreneurs are seen in subordinate roles; with low levels of education and technical skills; low exposure to other businesses; lack of role models; lack of peer support and business associations; low incomes and poor investment capacity.

·       Gradually things are improving for women because of their tremendous determination and courage.

·       Women are starting to enter specific business areas including education, health, engineering and IT.

·       Women are getting more active participation in the political arena.

·       About 60% of women entrepreneurs in Pakistan have opted for traditional businesses such as beauty salons, bakeries and boutiques

·       The largest numbers of women are employed in the garment and handicrafts sector.

·       In general, urban women are better placed in terms of accessing information than those operating in the rural areas.

·       Many women are learning skills such as embroidery, sewing, knitting for income generation, but lack an environment to start small businesses.

Economic necessity is forcing more and more women in Pakistan to engage in some sort of employment, without relieving them of their traditional roles. There is the potential to start businesses in the handicrafts industry and create ways for women to generate income, but to do so they need to learn business skills and get access to financing.  WomenTeachingWomen hopes to help the process of helping these women to start small businesses. 

WOMEN AND POVERTY

Women make up half of the world's population and yet represent a staggering 70% of the world's poor. For the millions of women living in poverty, their lives are a litany of injustice, discrimination and obstacles that get in the way of achieving their basic needs of good health, safe childbirth, education and employment. Overcoming these inequalities and ensuring that women benefit from development requires that the needs and desires of women are not only taken into account, but be put front and center.

We live in a world in which women living in poverty face gross inequalities and injustice from birth to death. From poor education to poor nutrition to vulnerable and low pay employment, the sequence of discrimination that a woman may suffer during her entire life is unacceptable but all too common and happens in every country, rich or poor.  What does this look like throughout a woman's life?


As a baby born into poverty, she might be abandoned and left to die, through the practice of female infanticide. Worldwide, there are 32 million missing women'. During her childhood, her proper feeding and nutrition may be neglected out of family favoring of male children.

  As a girl or woman she may be a victim of female genital mutilation and cutting. 100 to 140 million girls and women around the world have undergone genital mutilation, including 6.5 million in Western countries. Embedded in cultural norms, this act is often carried out with the consent of mothers, in conditions that lead to lifelong pain, infection and premature death. As an adolescent she may be required to have an early marriage…and young pregnancy puts girls at risk of maternal deaths.

WomenTeachingWomen is devoted to changing this picture by providing women with the education and skills to start small businesses and become financially independent. 

POVERTY FOR WOMEN IN AFRICA STILL A MAJOR ISSUE

Poverty has a female face and the global economic downturn has had its greatest impact on women.  More women lost jobs and have been forced to manage shrinking incomes to feed and their children and manage shrunken household incomes.

The portrait of the typical poor African youth is a young woman about 18.5 years old. She lives in a rural area and has dropped out of school. She is single, but is about to be married or be given in marriage to a man approximately twice her age. She will be the mother of six or seven kids in about 20 years.

The global economic crisis has hit African women on two fronts. First, it arrested capital accumulation by women, and second, it has drastically reduced the   individual incomes of women,  as well as the budgets they manage on behalf of households.

Unlike rich countries where more men tend to lose jobs compared to women, the crisis in Africa is leaving women with ever fewer job choices. In many export-oriented industries – for example, the cut-flower industry in Ethiopia, Kenya and Uganda, and the textile industry in Kenya and Lesotho, it is women, not men, who are bleeding jobs because of the crisis.

Declining subsidies and a tightening of micro-finance lending further restricts the funds available to women in Africa to run their households and provide for their children.

The Realities of Poverty In Israel

THE REALITIES OF POVERTY IN ISRAEL

Before Yael, a haredi woman, landed her job, she and her family of five were eking out an existence on the $475 a month her husband made studying Torah full-time at a yeshiva plus about another $100 from government child allowances. 

Her relatives helped when they could, but the family’s monthly income still left it well beneath the poverty level in Israel. 



Now Yael, who like the other women I interviewed in preparation for WomenTeachingWomen’s upcoming programs in Israel, asked that her real name not be used, is earning about $1,200 a month doing paralegal work at a company that exclusively employs religious women like her. 


She shudders when she recalls the dark days of unemployment and impoverishment. 

She talked about how scary it was not to have the means to shop for basic needs like food and clothes. 

That feeling has become familiar to more and more Israelis who constitute a growing underclass.

In a robust economy that has produced an abundance of millionaires, there are many groups of people who have been left behind.  Among those hardest hit by poverty in the Jewish state are fervently Orthodox Jews (Haredim), new immigrants and Arabs — three groups that despite their obvious differences have much in common socioeconomically. 



All of the women we interviewed expressed a great desire to change their lives by becoming economically self-sufficient.  Most of them had excellent skills that could be used to start a small business.  Business ownership not only gives these women the opportunity to change their financial status, but it also gives them the flexibility to work and care for their typically large families.  These women are motivated and excited to start to the WomenTeachingWomen programs.