Working women still struggling for better treatment in Pakistan

Female Pakistani physician Robina had dreamed during her student life of becoming a famous doctor by helping poor patients and taking care of her own aging parents, but all were quashed once she got married as her husband strictly prohibited her chosen path.

"My poor parents sacrificed so much to make me a doctor. I burnt the midnight oil during my studies to fulfill my dream. Finally, I emerged as a qualified doctor and started my career in a public hospital," remembered Robina fondly of her younger years.

"The first three years of my job were wonderful; I was also preparing to specialize in gynecology, but my parents arranged my marriage with a doctor in 2012, and this was the time when disaster struck," Robina told Xinhua, now palpably more dejected.

"Everything was going smoothly, God gave me a daughter. A couple of times, I had to stay in hospital late into the night due to staff shortages and emergency cases. My husband's parents were angry and said it's not good for their reputation in society, for our child, and for my safety if I stay late outside," she continued.

"I resisted, but the threat of divorce from my husband forced me to quit," Robina, who is from Pakistan's eastern city of Lahore, said.

Robina, 31, is one of hundreds of thousands of Pakistani women who cannot work outside owing to social, cultural, traditional, religious, logistical, safety and governmental factors.

According to the official statistics, the female labor force participation rate in Pakistan is around 25 percent, compared to 13.4 percent in 1990, which is very low among South Asian countries, despite the fact that women comprise 48 percent of Pakistan's total population.

Naeem Bukhari, Chief Executive of the Human Capital Management Institute, said that social, moral and physical insecurity, and constitutional structures, policy documents, regulatory arrangements and institutional mechanisms are the major factors that can inhibit women from working freely and hamper their professional aspirations.

"These socio-environment aspects have formed over many centuries, and are anchored in the patriarchal system. The gender bias of this type of system is inflexible and deep-rooted as it draws legitimacy from the continuation of a traditional mindset, established rituals and a strong belief system," said Bukhari.

In the apparel industry, one of Pakistan's top export oriented sectors, about 90 percent of workers are male, a situation completely opposite to the situation in other South Asian countries where 90 percent of workers in this industry are women.

The main reason behind this difference is an unofficial labor regulation that restricts the employment of women after 7:00 p.m., to adhere to family members' rules that do not permit their female members to work in a factory after sunset.

According to the World Bank Country Gender Profile of Pakistan, social taboos and family systems confine women to the home and household with restricted movement, which limits women's access to education, employment, training opportunities and social services.

On the other hand, employers also don't like to hire women because they cannot work as many hours as men due to domestic responsibilities, and they might ask for maternity leave and benefits.

"One of the biggest problem for female workers is that they hold around 70 percent of jobs in unofficial sectors where no labor law is applied, which denies rights to the women. The jobs they occupy remain unregulated and unstable with irregular working hours, no contracts, as well as, unsafe and hazardous work environments," said Farzana Bari, head of the Gender Studies Department at the Quaid-e-Azam University in Islamabad.

Bari said there are insurmountable hurdles on the way to making the situation better for women, adding "concerned government departments and private sector stakeholders could jointly push vital policies leading to the strict implementation of legislation to guarantee the rights of working women and to others who want to work."

In 2010, Pakistan's National Assembly (the lower house) where women have a 33-percent representation, passed a bill to ensure working women's rights and to protect against harassment in the workplace. Since the promulgation of the law, in a number of cases, those violating the law have been sentenced, which has boosted women's confidence at the workplaces.

Bukhari believed that during the last decade, the level of social awareness has increased significantly in Pakistan and a large number of families have been breaking social taboos and allowing their female members to work outside freely, which hints at a better future for working women in the country.

"The government has taken a number of steps to make things better for women, but we feel the pace is very slow. I think the government should declare a social emergency to make Pakistan an ideal place for working women," said Bukhari.