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.

Write up (Daily Jang Newspaper)

9 EXCEPTIONAL PAKISTANI WOMEN IN 

BUSINESS AND TECHNOLOGY

Never underestimate the power of a woman because someone who after God has the capability to bring a life on Earth definitely has the strength to change destiny. Delicate and compassionate, a woman surely is but that should never be mistaken as weakness or incapability. The first and foremost version of her that is respected and recognized is of a mother, which truly deserves all the appreciation in the world. However they are capable of being diverse too. Initially, the best professions considered for women were teaching or medicine but times have changed.

Women all around the world are playing their part not only in the nurturing of nations but also as the work force needed to uplift the economic position of a country. We must be grateful to them for their sincerity and commitment. Here in our country after the 16 years of education, without further plans for education or careers, it is a must for girls to get married. It is in our opinion a very sacred bond, a bond which provides security, strength and completion to not only the individuals getting married but to the society as a whole. But seeing it as a full stop to both the prospects of further studies and careers is not justified in any way. Pakistani women have certainly walked out of this framework of life and excelled in many fields like journalism, philanthropy, IT world, engineering, politics e.t.c.They have proved themselves to be both great mothers and well-reputed, significant citizens. Today we would like to highlight the achievements and contribution of Pakistani Women in Business and Technology. Here are those twelve ladies, in no particular order but equally outstanding in their contributions. 

1: JEHAN ARA

Focusing on the IT world, let’s bring your attention to Jehan Ara, the mastermind behind PASHA (Pakistan Software Houses Associations). The company’s major objective is the development and protection of software industry in Pakistan. It also collaborates with companies beyond the borders to provide its clients with the best of software products and services. Jehan Ara has not only been active as President of PASHA but also worked for nearly 3 decades in marketing, communications and media in Pakistan, UAE, Hong Kong and the Far East. She is an entrepreneur, speaker, motivator and writer for various Industrial publications. She is working on her project “Women’s Virtual Network” that would help educated women deal with employers and other professional workers, giving them a chance to explore themselves in the world, with rapid IT growth.

2: RABIA GARIB 

Simple and a pure workaholic, that’s the lady next on our list, Rabia Garib. She is the Chief Executive of Toffee TV. Toffee TV is a great learning-aid that helps children learn through stories, songs and many fun activities in Urdu. In addition to this she is the co-founder of Rasala Publications, which focuses on IT trade. She has been honored with LadiesFund Trailblazer Award, for being a female role model and high achiever in Pakistan. She believes in strenuous hard work and is of the opinion that persistence is the key to success. She explains that women must not take on a job or start up a business thinking they would become millionaires, rather working every single day and not losing focus is the main thing. She herself works round the clock and is playing her best to make mark on this world and helping in any way she can.

3: SABEEN MAHMOOD

Inspired by her mother’s courage and constant struggle to stand for what is right, Sabeen Mahmood adopted the same qualities. She was the President of TIE (The Indus Entrepreneurs) and now owns T2F, the Second Floor Café. Her approach to life and situation in Pakistan is very different indeed. She is a strong believer of activism. Her café T2F is situated in Karachi. It is a platform that encourages healthy discussions and debate on the current issues of Pakistan. It engages the audience in many cultural activities, bringing writers and poets together. It also organizes art exhibitions, hence providing a wholesome goodness to the people’s mind. Sabeen who once was a part of corporate world, now focuses much more on creating awareness among people and educating them through this venture, T2F café is actually a project of “Peace Niche” (also founded and directed by Sabeen herself, it is a non profit organization that promotes resolving political conflicts and arguments through different cultural engagements. It mostly works on the areas of Art & culture, Science & technology and advocacy).Some other projects that come under Peace Niche include “Faraar”, “Science ka adda” and so on.

4: ROSHANEH ZAFAR

Roshaneh Zafar is the managing director of “Kashf foundation”. This foundation educates and funds the women working in villages, in order to better their economic condition. She herself has been educated from Yale University and Wharton School of Business, University of Pennsylvania. She started off Kashf foundation after leaving her job post at World Bank. Kashf foundation is a national program that spread from KPK, Sindh and now to Balochistan. This foundation provides value driven solution to families of the underprivileged areas and its main concentration lays micro-financing female led small businesses and start-ups. The company stands by its notable services and the credit goes to none other than, Roshaneh Zafar, who believes in the capacity of women and giving them the opportunity to grow by all means.

5:SHEBA NAJMI

This great lady started off simple as a news anchor and reporter for Indus Television. She was the host of “Press Review”. The show concentrated on current affairs and their discussion with several political figures, ambassadors and analysts. She got her BS and MS degree from Stanford University in Symbolic Systems, where she studied the interaction between humans and computers. She was a Fellow at “Code for America” and became part of several notable projects like “Honolulu Answers” and “Social Media handbook for Cities”. She was also the lead designer for seven years for Yahoo Mail. This talented woman is the founder of “Tech for Change” which is a non profit organization, which focuses on bringing entrepreneurs, developers and designers together in order to help and eliminate most of Pakistan’s civic problems. In addition to this she in her own words is “primarily interested in leading UX or Product, ideally at mission-focused social enterprises that are seriously out to transform the world.”

6:SALMA JAFRI

A mom and a business woman, she’s the lady taking care of both worlds. However, she is of the opinion that being a mother is definitely harder of the two jobs but mostly it’s the handling of both of these that’s the bigger challenge. After her MBA she like all other ambitious graduates headed out to look for a job. She had her first interview with the CEO of a small multi national company, who happened to know her grandfather as well. This sounds like a job already in the pocket doesn’t it? Well here’s the truth she never got it. The CEO being well aware of her grandfather knew that “girls of their family got married soon to become housewives”. That was the moment she realized she was not going to get hired because she was a woman. But soon after this she got a job at the Pakistan arm of Deloitte & Touche. Today she stands in front of the world as a successful “content marketer”, the term she uses for herself. She is the founder and CEO of WordPL.net, which basically, focuses on marketing the content any young entrepreneur, wants to put up through social media. There areas of expertise are blog and content writing, social media marketing and planning, online videos and marketing consultation.

7: MARIA UMAR

Another talented name comes down in this list of entrepreneurs, Maria Umar, the founder of “The Women’s Digital League”. She was a school teacher. After being refused maternity leave, she quit her job. Later she started writing for another lady, who she had found through the well known job portal “Rozee.pk”. One thing led to another and she found her employers oDesk profile. She then realized that she too could directly contact clients and help herself out better. These became the origins of a humble content creating business. She set up her own oDesk account, gave away a few jobs of writing starting from her own family. Gradually it became what we call “The Women’s Digital League”. This company gives a chance to all the educated young girls to get a job in the digital world. The key is the positive utilization of social media that helps writers connect with the clients across the globe. The company has been expanded to “The Digital League”, a platform for Pakistan’s digital workforce, which provides digital solutions to individuals and corporate clients. She truly believes in the empowerment of women and has continually played her part to show her conviction.

8: SABA GUL

There are few of us, who after a worthy degree in hand bother to think about someone other than themselves. Here, we’d like to mention someone whose education did not solely benefit her but also the under-privileged. Saba Gul did bachelors and masters from MIT. She studied Computer Sciences and Economics. She is a successful entrepreneur that runs a non profit organization Popinjay (previously named BLISS), which helps girls, and their families of Pakistan, living below the poverty line to get education. They are taught languages English and Urdu, Mathematics and lessons on skills and entrepreneurship. These girls are trained to design and create handbags. These handbags become a source of income and pay for the tuitions for at least 4 or 6 months. She has been a part of other projects too. She was a MIT Public Service Fellow in Sri Lanka, where she worked on economical solar lighting that helped out tsunami refugees. She is definitely the kind working for the greater good of humanity.

9: SALAINA HAROON 

Playing a vital role in the telecom and technology sector is Salaina Haroon. She is the Editor in chief of CIO Pakistan magazine. CIO is the world’s largest business technology leadership magazine. It is printed in many countries around the globe including Pakistan. Also, she is the founder and director of Communique Collective. It is a marketing firm that deals with small and medium enterprises both in Pakistan and abroad. The firm works for building and strategizing technological companies. It also focuses on Public Relations, impact of social media on News companies and bettering the position of Pakistan on an international level. Salina believes in exploring and involvement of a person in different workshops, conferences e.t.c. that helps to realize, understand the on going circumstances and work in accordance to them. She herself was a part of EISHENHOWER Fellowship.

The extensive list above is the living proof of the fact that women are indeed capable of working and excelling beyond all confinements and expectations. Mentioned above are just 9 of the amazing women in the world of business and technology, when there are so many more that ought to be discussed and praised for their contributions. A hearty round of applause from our side to all these great Pakistani women, they have made us proud indeed!

Tubaa Noori: Writeup Published on Daily Jang Newspaper