Global Gender Gap Report triggers debate on womens' condition in Pakistan

A Global Gender Gap Report has ranked Pakistan as the second-worst country in terms of gender parity triggering a debate on the need to increase women's participation and representation in all spheres of public life.

According to media reports, there have been few areas where women participation is good such politics. However, the overall condition of women in Pakistan continues to remain deplorable.

As per the National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA), as many as 10 million women have been added to the electoral rolls since the 2018 general elections, taking the total number of female registered voters to 56.95 million, reported The Nation.

This does seem like a positive sign however, it is just an iota of the mamoth task which lies ahead of Pakistan in terms of working toward the improvement of women's condition and giving them rights at par to men in the country.

According to reports, the numbers reflect that the launch of the ECP-NADRA joint campaign in 2017 has been successful in the pursuit of reducing the gender gap in the electoral roll. All of this was possible because of the measures like setting up female-only registration centres and deploying mobile registration vans to increase the registration of unregistered women.

However, the reports pointed out that women still are far behind men in the south Asian nation.

There are other significant barriers contributing to the gender voting gap, such as family restrictions and societal taboos related to women's visibility in public life, which go beyond just institutional challenges.

Revealing a grim picture of the state of women in Pakistan, a report by the World Economic Forum (WEF) has ranked Pakistan as the second-worst country in terms of gender parity, a media report said.

In the Global Gender Gap Report which was released by WEF, Pakistan is placed in the 145th spot in a survey of 146 countries, Dawn reported.

As per the statistics, Pakistan has 107 million women and the country closed at 56.4 per cent in the report's gender gap index. The report observed, "this is the highest overall level of parity Pakistan has posted" since the launch of the global gender gap report by WEF in 2006.

( With inputs from ANI )