Discrimination On Women Carrier

Women are allowed to fulfill something she loved to do. Now adays it is very commonly used by our parents that they are giving education to their daughter to get good marriage proposal. I must say no girl is bother to win a degree to get marriage. Actually herself she is Master of chief, philosopher of thoughts, PhD of care, arts of managing her home and financer of her own house. She has a world inside in which she perform all her duty but not as a duty but as a love in love of her family. So I completely disagree with this opinion that women are educated for good marriage proposal. Every female can study as it is her right, even our Islam tells us to get education.

Prophet Mohammad S.A.W said,

“The best gift from a father to his child is Education and Upbringing”

So according to Islam every child must be educated. Further it can be elaborated by this hadees;

The Prophet Mohammad S.A.W said,

"Attainment of knowledge is a must for every Muslim”

It means that education is necessary for both male and female. So it is women right to learn and get education. The first word revealed was “iqra” translated as to “read” and according to hadees;

The Prophet Mohammad S.A.W said,

“Acquisition of knowledge is binding on all Muslims (both men and women without any discrimination)”

Women and men must get knowledge in a right way, there is no discrimination in Islam according to education, so it is every female right to study and get education. Now it is clear that females are study for making herself educate not for good proposal of marriage.

Now let’s talk about women and society. It is our wrong perception that women are just to serve home and can’t play her role out of her house. Some people also believe that in Islam women are not allowed to take part in other work except home chores. Let me clear this that women are completely devoid of spiritual, social, economic and political rights. Islam allowed her to educate herself and use that education for the betterment of society. Women has right to earn money if she needs or wants, even she has right to keep own property. In short she can share her ideas and opinion. Every woman has love for her country and she must take some steps for the betterment and prosperity of her country. There are many role models who played an important part for society and county. The best example of Hazrat Khadija (R.A) is here. She involved in trade and work for herself.So stop calling this that Islam didn’t give permission to a woman to work.

It is necessary to understand the feelings of women because they are also human and they also keep some desire and wishes. Just to make her marry instead of appreciate is totally nonsense and inhumane. She works hard to get degree for her better future, for accomplishment of her dreams, for the benefits of society and for her respect.

                                                                                                     Writer: Shafaque Nasir

 

A success story

When it comes to making documentaries to expose topics of injustice, particularly against women, Pakistan is a good place to start. Whereas the local community rarely celebrates, commends, or even discusses the achievements of women, the international community has become a major ‘game-changer’ in many Pakistani affairs. In this regard, we welcome American actress and philanthropist Salma Hayek’s latest production, Humaira: The Game Changer, which shines the spotlight on Pakistani female education advocate Humaira Bachal, in the hopes that the achievements of other Pakistani women will also be brought forward to celebrate.

Whether it is an accomplishment in the field of education, entertainment, science or literature, women in our country deserve to be showcased. We easily remember the achievements that men have racked up in Pakistan, but we do not so easily remember the great deeds performed by our women. When we give credit to women where it is due, we are establishing healthy role models for future generations to follow. Should more women be empowered to make a difference in society through education and various careers, they would be more accomplished than men in some ways. While taking on traditional female roles, such as providing care to children, tending to the household, and serving as the backbone of a family, they would simultaneously and courageously take on the responsibility of earning the daily bread and butter.

We have seen the films created by the likes of Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy and we have read texts of injustice written firsthand by the likes of Malala Yousufzai. Now, we must recognise the women on the ground, who are making a difference where the government and society have previously failed, whether it is through providing girls with basic education, training women in a vocational career, or counseling young girls and women who would otherwise grow older with a poor sense of self-esteem. This sort of recognition is necessary to boost our own confidence, as a nation that pays homage to women’s achievements.

Working Women Seeding a Silent Social Revolution in Pakistan

The status of women in Muslim societies is rapidly changing, and there is a silent social revolution taking place with rising number of women joining the workforce and moving up the corporate ladder in Pakistan. 

"More of them(women) than ever are finding employment, doing everything from pumping gasoline and serving burgers at McDonald’s to running major corporations".



Beyond company or government employment, there are a number of NGOs focused on encouraging self-employment and entrepreneurship among Pakistani women by offering skills training and microfinancing. Kashf Foundation led by a woman CEO and BRAC are among such NGOs. They all report that the success and repayment rate among female borrowers is significantly higher than among male borrowers.


In rural Sindh, the PPP-led government is empowering women by granting over 212,864 acres of government-owned agriculture land to landless peasants in the province. Over half of the farm land being given is prime nehri (land irrigated by canals) farm land, and the rest being barani or rain-dependent. About 70 percent of the 5,800 beneficiaries of this gift are women. Other provincial governments, especially the Punjab government have also announced land allotment for women, for which initial surveys are underway, according to ActionAid Pakistan.



Both the public and private sectors are recruiting women in Pakistan's workplaces ranging from Pakistani military, civil service, schools, hospitals, media, advertising, retail, fashion industry, publicly traded companies, banks, technology companies, multinational corporations and NGOs, etc. 



Here are some statistics and data that confirm the growth and promotion of women in Pakistan's labor pool:

1. A number of women have moved up into the executive positions, among them Unilever Foods CEO Fariyha Subhani, Engro Fertilizer CFO Naz Khan, Maheen Rahman CEO of IGI Funds and Roshaneh Zafar Founder and CEO of Kashf Foundation.

2. Women now make up 4.6% of board members of Pakistani companies, a tad lower than the 4.7% average in emerging Asia, but higher than 1% in South Korea, 4.1% in India and Indonesia, and 4.2% in Malaysia, according to a February 2011 report on women in the boardrooms.

3. Female employment at KFC in Pakistan has risen 125 percent in the past five years, according to a report in the NY Times.

4. The number of women working at McDonald’s restaurants and the supermarket behemoth Makro has quadrupled since 2006.



5. There are now women taxi drivers in Pakistan. Best known among them is Zahida Kazmi described by the BBCas "clearly a respected presence on the streets of Islamabad".



6. Several women fly helicopters and fighter jets in the military and commercial airliners in the state-owned and private airlines in Pakistan.

Here are a few excerpts from the recent Business week story written by Naween Mangi:

About 22 percent of Pakistani females over the age of 10 now work, up from 14 percent a decade ago, government statistics show. Women now hold 78 of the 342 seats in the National Assembly, and in July, Hina Rabbani Khar, 34, became Pakistan’s first female Foreign Minister. “The cultural norms regarding women in the workplace have changed,” says Maheen Rahman, 34, chief executive officer at IGI Funds, which manages some $400 million in assets. Rahman says she plans to keep recruiting more women for her company.

Much of the progress has come because women stay in school longer. More than 42 percent of Pakistan’s 2.6 million high school students last year were girls, up from 30 percent 18 years ago. Women made up about 22 percent of the 68,000 students in Pakistani universities in 1993; today, 47 percent of Pakistan’s 1.1 million university students are women, according to the Higher Education Commission. Half of all MBA graduates hired by Habib Bank, Pakistan’s largest lender, are now women. “Parents are realizing how much better a lifestyle a family can have if girls work,” says Sima Kamil, 54, who oversees 1,400 branches as head of retail banking at Habib. “Every branch I visit has one or two girls from conservative backgrounds,” she says.

Some companies believe hiring women gives them a competitive advantage. Habib Bank says adding female tellers has helped improve customer service at the formerly state-owned lender because the men on staff don’t want to appear rude in front of women. And makers of household products say female staffers help them better understand the needs of their customers. “The buyers for almost all our product ranges are women,” says Fariyha Subhani, 46, CEO of Unilever Pakistan Foods, where 106 of the 872 employees are women. “Having women selling those products makes sense because they themselves are the consumers,” she says.

To attract more women, Unilever last year offered some employees the option to work from home, and the company has run an on-site day-care center since 2003. Engro, which has 100 women in management positions, last year introduced flexible working hours, a day-care center, and a support group where female employees can discuss challenges they encounter. “Today there is more of a focus at companies on diversity,” says Engro Fertilizer CFO Khan, 42. The next step, she says, is ensuring that “more women can reach senior management levels.”

The gender gap in South Asia remains wide, and women in Pakistan still face significant obstacles. But there is now a critical mass of working women at all levels showing the way to other Pakistani women.

I strongly believe that working women have a very positive and transformational impact on society by having fewer children, and by investing more time, money and energies for better nutrition, education and health care of their children. They spend 97 percent of their income and savings on their families, more than twice as much as men who spend only 40 percent on their families.

Reference: http://www.riazhaq.com/2011/09/working-women-seeding-silent-social.html

Getting women to the top of the career ladder through education

In the face of significant social and cultural barriers, it is tempting to be cynical about a role for education in promoting women managers in developing economies. Consider the number of factors that could come in the way: nationally, cultural and social attitudes may discourage the career advancement of women, and at the firm-level, male-dominated informal networks and cultures can act as barriers. Furthermore, even if all these obstacles were somehow removed, the lack of good quality education itself, and skills mismatches can pose problems.

But, in spite of all this, education remains a crucial founding block for career success. After all, one needs an education in the first place to get to a point where these other factors can undercut the likelihood of career progression. Therefore, without access to education, one may stumble even before the climb up the career ladder begins.

In our recent study (forthcoming, Feminist Economics) my co-author and I explore whether access to education is correlated with the likelihood of becoming a female boss in the formal private sector of developing countries. We use Enterprise  surveys data for information on the gender of the top managers of the private firms. The advantage of looking at top managers is that it presents a type of employment that is likely to raise the welfare of women and their influence in society, and is not susceptible to data quality issues like wage data.

For our study we use Enterprise Surveys data on the gender of the top managers in 16,000 manufacturing firms spread across 73 developing countries. We define access to education as the ratio of male-female enrollment in primary, secondary and tertiary education. Firm-level factors include, economic sector, age of firm, availability of formal training, exporting status, and the quality of the business environment. At the country-level, we control for the level of development, the proportion of women in parliament, the legal system, rule of law, and religi

As one would expect, an increase in access to education for women has a positive and highly significant relationship with the likelihood of having women top managers. More importantly, our analysis finds that a 1-unit increase in the ratio of male-female enrollment in primary, secondary, and tertiary education is associated with a 7.8 percent increase in women managers.

Based on this result, our most conservative estimate shows that when a country climbs up from having the lowest ratio of women’s education enrollment (in our sample, this is Chad) to the highest (Dominica), the likelihood of a woman becoming a top manager at a firm can increase by 16 percentage points. This is a large increase given that only 19.5 percent of the firms in our sample have a woman top manager. Furthermore, when singling out the education level, tertiary female education enrollment is the most important determinant of female manager presence. Finally, our findings are much stronger for small firms than large firms, potentially indicating an additional benefit of policies targeting small firms.

While data limitations do not allow us to fully address the causality issue, we hope that the study is a step in the right direction and it encourages more endeavors into the subject matter.