The Myth of Missing Women: A Case Study of Pakistan

Abstract

In the contemporary era, women's empowerment promises enormous gains ensuring a vigorous socio-economic boost for the economy. Further, the persistently changing world demands equity for both men and women as restrictions to women’s rights and opportunities cost an economy in terms of income losses. Hence, overcoming gender discrimination and inequality remains a challenge for developing economies. The idea of “missing women” is linked to the appalling absence of women in substantial parts of an economy. The prime objective of the study is to evaluate the myth of missing women for the economy of Pakistan. The study investigates whether the missing women problem exists in the economy or not. For this purpose, a multidimensional approach would be utilized to figure out various gender inequalities considered in the missing women paradigm. Given the available data and statistics opacity, the study would employ both time series (tentatively for the era of 1990-2020) and cross-sectional data of the Pakistan Social and Living Standards Measurement (PSLM) survey of 2019-20. The former would be collected from the websites of World Bank indicators while the latter would be gathered from the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics. Using a mixed approach, the study qualitatively investigates the aggregate indicators associated with the concept of missing women including the sex ratio, fertility rate, and population dividend of Pakistan with a comprehensive regional comparison. Whereas a quantitative analysis would be performed to examine different gender inequalities through the novel context of missing women. The authorities of Pakistan have made strides in reducing the gender gap through better educational enrolment rates and access to health care services. However, these improvements have not been well transmuted into an enhancement of equity and quality of women’s life. There is a dire need to broaden the horizon of gender equality and hence this study views gender inequality with the dimension of “missing women”.