Women’s Economic Empowerment: Beyond Participation and Work

A woman can spend years working, contributing to her family’s income, helping run a household, working in a field or supporting a family business, yet still have very little economic control over the resources connected to that work. Her contribution may be essential to the household, but that does not necessarily translate into ownership, financial independence or a meaningful role in decisions that affect her life. This is one of the less discussed dimensions of women’s economic disempowerment in Pakistan.

Much of the conversation around women’s economic participation focuses on whether women are working, but participation alone tells us very little about whether women have control over the income, assets and opportunities associated with their work. A woman may be economically active without having an asset in her own name, an income she can independently control or the financial security that comes with ownership.

Agriculture offers a particularly clear example of this contradiction. A recent study by the Sustainable Development Policy Institute found that 67 per cent of employed women in Pakistan work in agriculture, yet only around 2 per cent of ever-married women between the ages of 15 and 49 own agricultural land, either alone or jointly. Only 1.5 per cent of agricultural households are formally recorded as female-headed, while the study also found that 97.2 per cent of women had not inherited land or a house.

The contradiction is difficult to overlook. Women are deeply involved in producing agricultural value, but their presence becomes far less visible when ownership and productive assets are discussed. This is not simply a question of who possesses a piece of land. For an agricultural household, land can determine access to income, credit, investment and other opportunities, while secure ownership can also strengthen a woman’s bargaining position within the household and give her greater economic security when circumstances change.

The problem becomes even more complicated because agricultural work itself is not always recognised as work. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has reported that 62 per cent of rural women in Pakistan worked in the fields, while 60 per cent worked as unpaid workers on family farms and enterprises. Women participate in activities ranging from planting, weeding and harvesting to livestock care, cotton picking, food processing and other forms of agricultural labour. Cotton picking is particularly labour-intensive and is often carried out by women and children because the delicate cotton bolls require careful hand-picking to avoid damaging the crop. Yet much of this contribution takes place within the family and is therefore not treated in the same way as formal paid employment.

There is an important difference between participating in production and having an economic stake in what is produced. A woman may work on a family farm without receiving a wage, contribute to a crop without having a say in how its income is used, or spend years working on agricultural land without having her name recorded as an owner. When this happens, the economic value of her labour can become separated from the economic power that should accompany it.

This is why the language of women’s participation can sometimes conceal as much as it reveals. Enhancing the number of women who work is important, but it does not necessarily mean that women are becoming economically independent. A woman who earns an income but has no control over it is in a different position from a woman who can decide how her earnings are spent or invested. Similarly, a woman who works on land is in a different position from a woman who has a documented claim to that land and can make decisions about its use.

Economic independence also affects the choices available to women in other parts of their lives. Control over finances and assets can give a woman greater room to make decisions, respond to difficult circumstances and pursue opportunities. It does not automatically protect women from violence or discrimination, but economic dependence can make it more difficult for women to exercise choices when they are faced with difficult situations.

Economic disempowerment is also one of the factors that can shape women’s vulnerability to insecurity and violence, alongside social, cultural and institutional factors. Punjab Police recorded 20,114 cases of crimes against women in the first six months of 2026, including 4,446 rape cases. While these figures cannot be attributed to any single factor, limited economic independence can make it harder for some women to exercise choices, seek support or leave difficult circumstances.

Economic inequality and violence against women are not the same problem, and one should not be presented as the direct cause of the other. They do, however, raise a broader question about women’s autonomy and the extent to which women are able to exercise control over the resources, decisions and spaces that shape their lives. A woman’s position in society is affected not only by whether she works but also by whether she has the economic and social security to make meaningful choices.

This is where public policy can move beyond encouraging women to participate and focus on whether existing rights are accessible in practice. Pakistan already has legal provisions for women’s inheritance and property rights, along with mechanisms such as the Ombudsperson for addressing complaints. The focus should therefore be on improving awareness of these rights, making legal and administrative processes easier to navigate, and identifying gaps in the implementation of inheritance and land-record procedures. Any further reform should be guided by evidence of where existing mechanisms fall short, rather than assuming that another law alone will solve the problem.

Agricultural policies also need to recognize women as farmers rather than treating them only as members of farming households. Women who work on family farms should have direct access to agricultural extension services, finance, technology, training and markets. If programmes continue to identify the male head of the household as the primary farmer, women’s contribution will remain invisible even when a substantial part of the agricultural work is being performed by them.

Better data is equally important. If women’s unpaid agricultural labour is not properly measured, it becomes difficult to understand its economic value or design policies around the realities of rural women. Recognition in statistics may sound technical, but what governments count often determines what they eventually address.

There are already examples of how better documentation can begin to change this picture. The World Bank has reported that the Punjab Urban Land Systems Enhancement Project mapped and registered more than 28 million land parcels between 2022 and 2025, with women holding almost 31 per cent of registered parcels in the project area. These figures relate to the project’s registered parcels and should not be interpreted as representing women’s overall land ownership in Punjab, but they demonstrate how land registration can make women more visible as rights holders and create a clearer record of their relationship with productive assets.

The larger point is that women do not need to be persuaded that their work has value. Millions of women are already working, contributing to households and trying to build greater security for themselves and their families. What they need are institutions capable of recognising that contribution and allowing it to translate into something tangible, whether that is an asset in their name, income they can control, access to finance, a meaningful voice in household decisions or the ability to move through public spaces without fear.

Economic empowerment, therefore, cannot be reduced to putting more women into the workforce. It has to ask what women gain from the work they already do and whether that work gives them greater control over their own lives. A woman can cultivate a field without owning it, contribute to household income without controlling any of it, and participate in public life while still facing restrictions on her freedom and security.

Participation is an important beginning, but it cannot be the final measure of progress. The more meaningful question is whether women’s work, contribution and presence in society are translating into ownership, security, agency and a genuine stake in the decisions that shape their lives.

The writer is a Public Policy scholar.
aiman.zameer98@gmail.com