Islamabad: Pakistan has made significant progress in Gender Responsive Budgeting (GRB) despite ranking last globally on gender parity, experts said at a session organized by the Gender Working Group at the Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI).
In her keynote address, Dr Fareeha Armughan, Co-Chair of the Gender Working Group and Head of the Center for Evidence Action Research at SDPI, said Pakistan was ahead of several countries in gender-responsive budgeting despite persistent social stereotypes.
She highlighted the contrast that women constitute 49. 3 percent of Pakistan's population, while the country ranked 148th out of 148 countries on the Global Gender Gap Index 2025.
She said Pakistan had achieved 56. 7 percent parity across economic, educational, health and political indicators.
Dr Armughan clarified that Gender Responsive Budgeting was not a separate budget for women but an approach based on gender analysis, responsive allocation and accountability, including women's participation in budget consultations.
She said GRB had legal backing under Articles 25, 34 and 37-A of the Constitution, alongside Pakistan's national and international commitments on gender equality.
The expert identified six thematic pillars of gender-responsive budgeting: gender-based violence, women's economic empowerment, social protection, climate change, social services and policy design.
She said women owned only 1. 5 to 2 percent of agricultural land, while female labour force participation stood between 22. 7 and 25 percent.
Gender budget statements showed that only 8 percent of PSDP allocations and 9 percent of the current budget were directed toward women, she said.
Dr Armughan said women spent roughly 10 more hours per day on caregiving than men, while remaining among the least-paid segments of the workforce.
She said Pakistan's budget classification system remained largely gender-neutral, making the impact of public spending on women difficult to assess.
She also pointed to inadequate representation of women in planning and finance ministries and the absence of gender markers in many PSDP projects.
Regarding the FY2026-27 budget, she said social safety, education and infrastructure received the largest share of women-focused spending and noted that the government had removed taxes on women's hygiene products.
She called for an ecosystem of mentoring and institutional networks, along with fiscal support for incubation, financial literacy and capacity-building through gender-sensitive fiscal and regulatory measures.
SDPI Research Fellow Dr Kashif Majeed Salik said research showed that women who earned income tended to spend proportionally more on their families than men, particularly among migrant women workers.
He said investment in women's economic empowerment therefore had a direct positive impact on family welfare. During the question-and-answer session, Dr Armughan said fragmented delivery systems and weak local government capacity often undermined policies between federal design and implementation at the grassroots level.
She cited the example of women in a village in Tharparkar, Sindh, who spend around four hours daily collecting water, saying such unpaid work and time poverty were often overlooked in policymaking.
She argued that increasing female labour force participation required investment in care infrastructure, adding that the Uraan Pakistan framework sets participation targets without clearly defining an implementation pathway. She further said Pakistan's political economy often favoured visible investments such as infrastructure and social protection over less visible outcomes such as education quality, contributing to weak development outcomes.