Determinants of Women Empowerment in Pakistan: Some New Evidences from PSLM (2011-12)

Résumé

There are various criteria and determinants to quantify Women Empowerment.  The present study attempted to address two key concerns; Women decision about education and Women decision about more children to explain Women Empowerment in Pakistan. For the quantitative analysis, data set from PSLM (2011-2012) has been used. Binary Logistic Regression is applied as an estimation strategy. In addition, the detailed descriptive analysis has done prior to empirical analysis to see the relative importance of different determinants in Women Empowerment. The study reveals that the ration of empowered women is very low in the country; unfortunately, women enjoy relatively substandard status as compared to men. Education level of women generally improves decision making capacity of a woman. Similarly, age, type of educational institutions and paid work proved to be significant factors of women decision about education. On the other hand, increasing number of children enhance the level of a woman empowerment in family.  Further, there exists huge proportionate disparity between rural and urban women regarding the decision making aptitude. Even though the government is running number of programs to address the issue but still the situation has remained gloomy mainly because there exist highly constrained autonomy of females in contrast with males within the society. There is a dire need to extend awareness to empower women across all of the districts of country to fasten the development process.