Beyond the ShieldHow Pakistan can turn protecting women into empowering

By Tehreen Fatima:

Policy paper | September 2026
Beyond the Shield
How Pakistan can turn protecting women into empowering them
Tehreem Fatima, BS International Relations
Summary
Pakistan ranks third from last among 148 countries in the World Economic Forum’s Global
Gender Gap Report 2026. Most of the laws the country has passed for women over the past
decade protect them from harm: violence, harassment and the loss of their property.

That work
matters and has to continue. The state has moved much more slowly on binding economic,
educational and political measures that carry money and enforcement, the kind that would give
women a route into paid work, school and public office.
This paper argues that Pakistan has settled into a narrow working definition of empowerment. It
looks at what the evidence says that has cost, compares Pakistan’s approach with Bangladesh
and Rwanda, and proposes six reforms.
Key recommendations

• Give the 2022 National Gender Policy Framework legal force, with targets in all four
  dimensions of empowerment and an annual report to Parliament.
• Build an economic package for women: a ring-fenced credit window, childcare and safe
  transport, and easier access to identity documents and bank accounts.
• Launch a national secondary school stipend for girls on the Bangladesh model,
  protected across changes of government.
• Raise and enforce the women’s ticket requirement in the Elections Act, and set targets
  for women in cabinets.
• Finish the protection agenda by funding dedicated courts, prosecutors and witness
  protection.
• Require women to be in the room when gender policy is written, and publish who was
  consulted.

1. Protection and what comes after it
   Women make up nearly half of Pakistan’s population. The Pakistan Bureau of Statistics 2023
   Digital Census counted about 117.2 million, which is 48.5 percent of the total. Most countries
   would call that their largest untapped resource. Yet when Pakistan talks about women, the
   conversation tends to begin and end with protection from violence, harassment and
   dispossession. That work is necessary, and nothing in this paper argues otherwise. Protection
   was meant to be the starting point, and Pakistan has treated it as the destination. The question
   can no longer be only how to keep women safe. It also has to be how to let them earn, learn and
   lead.
   The numbers show what the narrow focus costs. In the World Economic Forum’s Global
   Gender Gap Report 2026, Pakistan scored 59.5 percent gender parity and ranked third from last
   of 148 economies. That was the lowest result among all seven South Asian countries and
   among all 38 lower middle income economies the report covers. To be fair, it was also
   1
   Pakistan’s strongest one-year improvement in a decade, driven mostly by education, and that
   deserves credit. But the progress in classrooms has not carried over into work or leadership.
   Pakistan still ranks 144th on economic participation, and only 6.13 percent of legislators, senior
   officials and managers are women.
   The labour market figures tell the same story. In 2024-25 only 22.7 percent of women were in
   the labour force, against 68.7 percent of men, and female unemployment stood at 10.5 percent
   against 6 percent for men. When the government launched its National Gender Policy
   Framework in 2022, its own launch material noted that of an estimated 76 million working-age
   women, only 3.2 million were in paid work. A lack of interest does not explain that. Research
   suggests roughly one in four non-working women say they would like to work. The economist
   Hadia Majid cites a 2016 IMF estimate that puts the cost to the economy at around 30 percent of
   GDP. Behind these figures are women with an education, a skill or an idea and no job to put it
   to.
   Table 1. Selected gender indicators for Pakistan
   Indicator Pakistan Source
   Overall gender parity score and rank (2026) 59.5%; third from last of
   148
   WEF Global Gender Gap
   Report 2026
   Economic participation and opportunity rank
   (2026)
   144th WEF 2026
   Women among legislators, senior officials and
   managers (2026)
   6.13% WEF 2026
   Political empowerment rank (2026) 107th WEF 2026
   Women in ministerial positions (2025 edition) None recorded WEF 2025
   Female vs male labour force participation
   (2024-25)
   22.7% vs 68.7% Pakistan Labour Force Survey
   Female vs male unemployment (2024-25) 10.5% vs 6% Pakistan Labour Force Survey
   Gender gap in account ownership (2024 data) 30 percentage points Global Findex 2025, World
   Bank
   Female vs male literacy 48.5% vs 69.1% WEF 2025 and 2026 reporting
   Gender-based violence cases reported (2024) 32,617 SSDO report
   Two features of the financial and political picture stand out. The Global Findex 2025 puts
   Pakistan’s gender gap in account ownership at 30 percentage points, against an average of about
   5 points across low- and middle-income economies. And 60 of the 342 National Assembly seats
   are reserved for women, roughly 17.5 percent, yet the 2025 edition of the WEF report recorded
   no women at all in ministerial positions.
2. What the state has legislated
   To see whether the imbalance in outcomes is matched by an imbalance in policy, I reviewed the
   main federal and Punjab instruments on women that were passed or proposed between 2016
   and 2026. It is not a complete census of provincial law, and it leaves out programmes that have
   no statute behind them. It does cover the pieces that governments themselves ppoint to.2Table 2. Major instruments on women, 2016 to 2026Year and governmentInstrument Type How it works2016, PMLN Punjab Protection of Women against Violence Act; federal criminal law amendments on honour killing and rapeProtection New offences and remedies; the Punjab Act also created dedicated protection mechanisms2017, PMLN Elections Act 2017, Section 206Political Parties must give at least 5% of generalseat tickets to women2020, PTI Zainab Alert, Response and Recovery ActProtection Alert and recovery system for missing and abducted children2020,
3. PTI Enforcement of Women’s Property Rights ActEconomic rightsA woman deprived of property can complain to the Ombudsman, who aims to decide within about 60 days2020 to 2021, PTIAnti-Rape (Investigation and Trial) ActProtection Special courts and prosecutors, crisis cells in hospitals, an offenders register2022, PTI Amendments strengthening the workplace harassment law of 2010Protection Broader protection for women at work2022, PTI National Gender Policy FrameworkBroad frameworkSix focus areas: education, governance, employment, security, health and political participation. A policy document, not a statute2025, PMLNled PunjabWomen’s Inheritance Rights Implementation Bill (introduced)Economic rightsProposes an ombudsperson, land record correction and penalties for depriving women of inheritanceRead as a whole, the table shows a few things. It is not one party’s habit. The PMLNgovernment passed the 2016 laws, the PTI government introduced the 2020 to 2022 package,and a PMLN-led provincial government is now bringing forward the latest proposal.
4. Theideologies differ and the tendency stays the same.Protection also dominates what has actually become law. Four of the six binding federal andprovincial laws in the table are protection laws. I do not mean that as a criticism of them. It is anobservation about where the legislative momentum has been.The exceptions are few and fragile. The Property Rights Act and Section 206 are real attemptsat economic and political empowerment. The Act, however, covers only complaints a womanfiles against her own family members, and Section 206 sets the bar at 5 percent of general-seattickets. According to the Aurat Foundation, several large parties fell short even of that in the2024 election, although party representatives said they had met the requirement.
5. The 2022framework is the one document that covers every dimension of empowerment, but a frameworkis a guideline. It cannot compel anyone.3. Why protection winsI have been trying to work out why governments with such different ideologies keep reachingfor the same kind of law. I found four explanations. They are my own hypotheses and should betested, but each is consistent with the record.3Protection costs little and takes nothing from anyone. A law saying women

enrolment rose from an average of 8 percent to 14 percent, and dropouts fell from 15 percent to
below 4 percent. At national scale the programme reached more than two million girls a year,
and there are now more girls than boys in secondary school. Bangladesh ranked 24th of 148
countries in the 2025 Global Gender Gap Report, the highest in South Asia.
Two features of the programme matter more than the cash itself. Every government after 1994
kept it and expanded it, whatever its party. And it was set up as a standing commitment and
never as a temporary event.
It is not a perfect model. Researchers found that boys’ enrolment in co-educational schools fell
in stipend areas, and that the programme did better at getting girls into classrooms than at
improving what they learned or what work they later found. Pakistan should copy the durability
and the financing, and improve the design by linking payments to learning as well as
attendance.
Rwanda and the constitutional floor
Article 55(1) of Rwanda’s 2003 constitution requires that women hold at least 30 percent of
decision-making positions. In the Chamber of Deputies women now hold roughly 61 to 64
percent of the seats, the highest share in the world. The quota was a first step. Rwanda’s laws on
women’s rights include inheritance rights (1999), joint ownership of land between husband and
wife, a gender-based violence law that criminalised marital rape, and a 2016 succession law
giving sons and daughters equal inheritance. Rwanda ranked 39th in the 2024 Global Gender
Gap Report.
Rwanda’s circumstances are unusual. After the genocide women made up most of the
population, and one party has governed for a long time. Implementation problems remain,
particularly for rural widows and unmarried mothers trying to acquire land. Pakistan does not
need to copy Rwanda’s political structure. What it can take is the legal design: a guaranteed
number of women in the seats where the next round of laws gets drafted.
Both cases point the same way. Commitments need to be in law with numbers attached, because
aspirations in a framework are easy to shelve and a statutory floor is harder to ignore. The
money has to survive changes of government, as Bangladesh’s stipend did. And women’s
presence in the room shapes the next generation of policy, which is how Rwanda’s reforms on
inheritance and violence came about.
6. Recommendations
Education, health and much of social policy became provincial subjects after the 18th
Amendment, so most of these reforms need federal leadership working through provincial
delivery. For each recommendation I name a lead institution and a way to tell whether it
worked.
6.1 Give the National Gender Policy Framework legal force
The 2022 framework could be converted into a National Women’s Empowerment Act, with
matching provincial laws. The Act should define empowerment in four areas: protection,
economic participation, education and politics, with time-bound targets for each. The National
Commission on the Status of Women should report to Parliament every year. A cross-party
parliamentary committee should back the Act so that it survives changes of governmen

6.2 Build an economic package for women
Researchers point to mobility, social norms, caregiving, and access to identity documents and
bank accounts as the main barriers, and a package has to address them. It should include a ringfenced women’s window in public credit and small business programmes, with reporting on
how much of it is used; childcare and safe, affordable transport near workplaces; and support
for getting identity cards issued and accounts opened through social protection channels such as
the Benazir Income Support Programme. Success can be measured against the 22.7 percent
participation rate and the 30-point account gap.
6.3 Launch a national girls’ secondary stipend
Women’s literacy in Pakistan is 48.5 percent, against 69.1 percent for men, and in 2024-25
about 28 percent of children aged 5 to 16 were out of school. A stipend like Bangladesh’s could
run through conditional federal grants to the provinces, aimed first at the districts with the
lowest enrolment. To last the way Bangladesh’s has, it would need support from across the party
spectrum at launch.
6.4 Raise and enforce the women’s ticket requirement
Section 206 of the Elections Act requires parties to give women at least 5 percent of generalseat tickets. The floor could be raised in steps to at least 15 percent within two election cycles.
The Election Commission should have to publish each party’s figures before allotting symbols,
and should use the penalty powers that Section 207 provides. Critics say parties sometimes give
women tickets only to comply with the law, so the Commission should also report how many
women are contesting seats where their party has a real chance of winning. The same logic
applies to cabinets, where the 2025 WEF report recorded no women ministers, and Parliament
should set a target for women’s share of cabinet posts.
6.5 Finish the protection agenda
The protection agenda is far from complete. Where caseloads are high, the 174 special courts
could gradually be converted into dedicated gender-based violence courts. Specialised
prosecutors, a witness protection programme and victim support are needed too, since so many
cases fail when witnesses withdraw. Conviction rates and time-to-trial figures should be
published every year for each district. The special court results in section 4 show that this
investment pays off.
6.6 Put women in the room when policy is written
Any new gender law or policy should be preceded by a formal consultation that includes rural
women, homemakers, survivors of domestic violence and women with disabilities, as well as
women already active in public life. The consultation should be published, and the National
Commission on the Status of Women should audit every such policy for how many women took
part in writing it. The test is whether a policy reflects the interests of the women it was written
for.
Table 3. Recommendations, lead institutions and indicators
Recommendation Lead institution How we will know it worked

1. Statutory empowerment
   framework
   Ministry of Planning; National
   Commission on the Status of
   Women; provinces
   Annual report to Parliament covering
   all four dimensions, with targets met or
   explained
   6
   Recommendation Lead institution How we will know it worked
2. Economic package Finance Division; State Bank;
   provincial governments
   Female participation above 22.7%;
   account gap below 30 points
3. Girls’ secondary stipend Provincial education departments;
   federal conditional grants
   Girls’ secondary enrolment, completion
   and learning scores in target districts
4. Ticket floor and cabinet
   targets
   Parliament; Election Commission Share of tickets on winnable seats;
   women in cabinets
5. Dedicated courts and
   witness protection
   Provincial law and home
   departments; high courts
   Conviction rates; time to trial; witness
   retraction rates
6. Consultation and audit Every ministry drafting gender
   policy; NCSW
   Published consultation records for each
   policy
7. Objections and constraints
   The most common objection is cost. The IMF estimated in 2016 that low female labour force
   participation costs Pakistan roughly 30 percent of GDP. The figure is old and should be read as
   indicative, but the direction is clear, and stipends and credit programmes can be phased in to
   match fiscal capacity.
   Some will say protection has to come first. It does, and this paper does not propose a trade-off.
   The special court results show that protection pays off when it is funded. Protection is a basic
   need that Pakistan has mistaken for the finish line.
   Others say society is not ready. Public attitudes are a real constraint, but laws also shape norms,
   as Rwanda’s inheritance laws and Bangladesh’s stipend suggest. Waiting for attitudes to change
   first has produced no change so far.
   Devolution is another constraint. Provinces control education and most social policy, so a
   federal Act alone cannot deliver these reforms. That is why the recommendations combine
   federal legislation and funding with provincial implementation, and why the Council of
   Common Interests and inter-provincial ministerial forums need a standing agenda item on
   women.
   Data is the last limit. The figures in this paper come from different years and sources, and
   numbers on gender-based violence vary considerably between agencies. The trends point the
   same way whichever source is used, but readers should check current figures before citing
   them.
8. Conclusion
   Pakistan has plenty of laws on women’s rights. What they lack are the things that give a woman
   something to build on: a salary, a job title, representation, and an education that continues past
   the first years of school. Protection laws have told women the state will shield them from harm.
   The next laws need to tell them the state expects them to lead.
   Bangladesh has an income level and social setting comparable to Pakistan’s, yet it keeps girls in
   school because every government has kept paying for it. Rwanda shows how a legal minimum
   for women’s representation changes the laws that follow. Neither is a ready-made model. Both
   show that empowerment depends on legislation, funding and persistence.

Pakistan’s own record points the same way. Where the state has built the courts, prosecutors and
procedures that its protection laws promised, results have improved. Applying that approach to
employment, education and politics could move Pakistan from a country that protects women
to one that includes them in making decisions.
Sources

1. World Economic Forum, Global Gender Gap Report 2026, as reported by Dawn, “Pakistan
   ranked among bottom three in WEF’s Global Gender Gap Report 2026″
   (dawn.com/news/2030632), and Asia News Network (September 2026).
2. World Economic Forum, Global Gender Gap Report 2025, as reported by Dawn
   (dawn.com/news/amp/1916898) and Arab News (arab.news/jg8up), June 2025.
3. Pakistan Bureau of Statistics, Labour Force Survey 2024-25, as cited in The Friday Times, “The
   Immense Female Talent Pakistan Keeps Losing”, 25 September 2026.
4. Hadia Majid, “Female labour force participation in Pakistan and the central role of norms”,
   VoxDev (citing PBS 2025, IMF 2016 and Garlick et al. 2025).
5. World Bank, Global Findex Database 2025, as summarised by the FinDev Gateway, “Financial
   Inclusion: A Global Overview”.
6. Ministry of Planning, Development and Special Initiatives, National Gender Policy Framework
   launch, 8 March 2022, as reported by APP (app.com.pk) and Dawn.
7. The Express Tribune, “Report card: PTI government and women’s rights”
   (tribune.com.pk/story/2351009).
8. Dawn, “ECP moves to ensure quota for women on general seats” (dawn.com/news/1805941)
   and “ECP action sought against political parties for ignoring women quota”
   (dawn.com/news/1811055).
9. Sustainable Social Development Organisation (SSDO) 2024 report on gender-based violence,
   as reported by The Nation and Geo News, March 2025.
10. Dawn, “Call for effective implementation of gender-based violence laws”
    (dawn.com/news/amp/1961960) and “Consent on trial: How Pakistan’s courts are failing rape
    survivors” (dawn.com/news/1966003).
11. The Friday Times, “Counting in Punjab, Missing Everywhere Else: Pakistan’s Flawed Rape
    Statistics”, 3 June 2026.
12. Asian Development Bank Law and Policy Reform, Enforcement of Women’s Property Rights
    Act 2020; Business Recorder, 7 March 2020; The Nation, “Punjab moves to enforce women’s
    inheritance rights”, 31 May 2025.
13. Khandker, Pitt and Fuwa, studies of Bangladesh’s Female Secondary School Stipend
    Programme; Fuwa (2001), “The Net Impact of the Female Secondary School Stipend Program
    in Bangladesh”; Dhaka Tribune, “Bangladesh’s investment in girls’ education pays off”.
14. Rwanda Ministry of Gender and Family Promotion (migeprof.gov.rw); National Geographic,
    “How women are stepping up to remake Rwanda”; Diplomatist, “Political Representation and
    Unspoken Struggles of Rwandan Women”, March 2025.