Women empowerment

Gender equality is considered to be the vital concern in the process of development. Therefore, investment in women's empowerment is the key element in improving the economic, political and social conditions in Pakistan, particularly for Punjab in the context of sustainable development. The experience, insight and knowledge of both men and women is needed for 'development' to be more effective and sustainable. Hence decision making processes, evaluation planning and policy formulation should emphasise on mainstreaming gender equality around Pakistan.
Women empowerment is not limited to control over reproduction or financial independence only, rather it is a combination of literacy, employment and health. Women empowerment is an important and useful concept in the development of a community as it represents women as active agents rather than passive recipients of development policies.
A lot of studies conclude that if women are provided access to education, employment and health then they have more control and power over household decision making, improved child well-being, income, reduced fertility rates and increased resources. These studies have shown that women empowerment has a positive relation with the well-being of children and lead to the overall betterment of the family.
The Gender Gap Index (GGI) is used to measure the various dimensions of gender empowerment in Pakistan. GGI represents the level of inequality that exists between women and men through the gaps in different indicators, irrespective of our level of socio-economic development.
The four pillars of the index are: economic participation and opportunity; educational attainment; political empowerment; and health and survival - the four important aspects of life. It does not matter whether there are many or few resources, it measures whether males and females have equal access to whatever is available in these four aspects.
The variables used in this researched article are literacy rate, labour force participation rate, net primary enrolment rate, net secondary enrolment rate and percentage of fully immunised children. The variable 'fully immunised children' is used as a proxy variable to female and male life expectancy for all provinces because the data for life expectancy for both genders is not available for all the provinces in Pakistan.
Now lets compare and analyse the sub-indices and the GGI for each of the province.
A critical analysis revealed that Sindh has the highest value for economic participation and opportunity sub-index, which is followed by NWFP, Balochistan and Punjab. Since Punjab has the lowest value, this means that this province has the maximum gender gap in economic participation and opportunity index. Sindh has a value of 0.5806 in economic participation and opportunity index which is followed by NWFP that is 0.3126. Balochistan has a value of 0.2512 and Punjab surprisingly has the lowest value in economic participation and education index i.e. 0.1748.