According to the International Labor Organization (ILO), women in wage employment in Pakistan earn significantly less than men – by approximately 25 to 30 per cent, depending on the wage metric. Unfortunately they battle even larger wage disparities, up to 40 per cent less, within the informal economy such as the craft sector. This is made worse by the fact that labor laws are not enforced properly within Pakistan, and a lack of protections contributes to this disparity.
Although there has been some progress in reducing the gender pay gap, it is still a very real issue for most women in Pakistan. There is a disconnect between the law and reality for most women due to the unfortunate deep-rooted systemic inequality in Pakistan. Some international organizations such as the ILO and local NGOs such as Kaarvan Crafts Foundation have made interventions that have brought positive change. The ILO has helped reduce the gender gap within management and leadership positions using SCORE (Sustaining Competitive and Responsible Enterprises) Training, through which the number of female workers increased from 11 per cent to 15 per cent, and the number of female supervisors went up from two per cent to five per cent within three months of SCORE Training.
Kaarvan Crafts Foundation is an organization that has made it its mission to empower women by training women to become entrepreneurs and decision makers in charge of their own livelihoods. Interviews with some of the women beneficiaries of their programs have shown the transformational impact their training has had on their lives and families. These women who are now running successful businesses had initially never even gone out into the markets on their own without male family members or worked outside the home, and are now participating in exhibitions and trade fairs and traveling around the country after receiving training, support and encouragement from Kaarvan.
One of Kaarvan’s beneficiaries, Rehana, joined the Women’s Chamber Commerce (WCC) through the guidance she received from Kaarvan. Through Kaarvan she learned that the government had a 33% quota for women businesses, and remarked that many women don’t even know about government initiatives that benefit women business owners. For example, she was able to get discounts on exhibitions by being a member of the WCC. She feels that more women need to know about these opportunities, but they don’t have the awareness. Kaarvan was able to give her and other beneficiaries training, and the WCC helped her and other women businesses to get discounts, tax benefits and open bank accounts.
Rehana, who is from Multan, said Kaarvan taught her and other beneficiaries to form groups, get organized with other women, trained them on business skills, marketing techniques, product packaging, etc. Kaarvan encouraged them to keep going, introduced them to other markets and gave them access to many exhibitions, initially for free and then later they needed to pay to join an exhibition. Rehana said some Kaarvan beneficiaries from Multan are even going on international exhibitions to Bangladesh and Saudi Arabia to exhibit their crafts. She said Kaarvan taught them how to use mobile phones to do digital marketing, how to use WhatsApp, to make web pages and social media pages to market their products. She said one of Kaarvan’s employees even gave her photography tips for her social media page. She credits her success to the assistance she received from Kaarvan.
Another beneficiary of Kaarvan, Manaza, who has a business producing hand embroidery and hand-woven bags, claimed she learned many skills from Kaarvan, especially how to sell digitally. She participated in Kaarvan training sessions over Zoom and benefitted from continuous guidance that helped her to modernize and grow her business. She employs women in the safety of her home in Abbottabad, and given that it’s a culturally conservative area, the families of her female workers feel at ease that they are safe working in her home environment. Manaza was of the opinion that labor costs in Pakistan are very low, and there was a need to increase labor costs because Pakistani women have very good skills, like women in other countries but hardly make any money. She felt her products should get a better price, and women workers should get paid a higher hourly or daily rate. She said women shouldn’t be paid on a monthly basis, and can make more money based on how many hours they work and then can make more money by increasing the quality and quantity of their production. They will have an incentive to work harder and better for hourly work. She said it was more beneficial to have increased daily wages for her female workers than for them to get lower monthly pay that may come with some benefits such as transportation paid for.
Aisha, a Kaarvan beneficiary who lives in Punjab, says Kaarvan has helped her in many ways. Initially, she wasn’t used to even leaving the house without her husband but Kaarvan took her and other beneficiaries to different cities and gave them a lot of business ideas, made them participate in workshops and taught them about business management. She said Kaarvan taught them to even add the cost of washing fabric, of the electricity and transport costs in their pricing, and that Kaarvan was so useful and really gave her and other women exposure to the world, and gave them access to more markets. Aside from the benefits to her business, the exposure and confidence she got from Kaarvan has helped her in all aspects of her life. Aisha was able to take her daughter by herself to enroll her in Comsats University in Islamabad. She said people were amazed that she took her daughter to Islamabad herself without her husband, even booking the hotel and using the internet to research everything. She even made the decision to buy property in Islamabad without asking her husband’s opinion because her husband supported her and was happy with her decisions. She said Kaarvan made her so active that she didn’t need anyone’s guidance. People ask her how she’s so independent and able to make her own decisions, and she gives the credit to Kaarvan.
Maria, who is another Kaarvan beneficiary I interviewed, said she didn’t have any awareness before joining Kaarvan and said she was just running a simple business. After she signed up with Kaarvan, they did some training sessions for their women beneficiaries on legal awareness, from which she learned that she can run a proper business as a woman just like any man could, and that the way men can interact with different kinds of people to conduct their business, the law allows women to do the same. She learned that if anyone does any kind of fraud against her, or is difficult with her or her business for any reason, such as in terms of payments, it is her right to take them to court. She said Kaarvan arranged for them to be trained by lawyers on women’s empowerment, to teach them that they have the right to go to court the same way as men do.
Although there is a long way to go in reducing the gender gap and wage disparity, organizations like Kaarvan are making a real transformation one woman at a time. The women I interviewed that were Kaarvan’s beneficiaries all had several things in common, such as their ability to make independent decisions about their businesses and their lives, they gained a lot of confidence in themselves and in their abilities to grow their businesses, and an exposure to new skills, opportunities and markets that they otherwise would not have had. Their stories and successes are truly inspiring and the more Pakistani women can benefit from these opportunities and be empowered, the more we will be able to work towards reducing the systemic inequality that plagues our society and holds women back from meeting their true potential.