A general concern with equity in the economic development
process and the focus on issues of poverty, population growth, and
environmental degradation in recent years have both created an upsurge
in the interest in women's role in economic development. The women in
development (WID ) issue is closely related to the issue of sex
discrimination. In economic terms, discrimination occurs whenever market
allocations are affected not by the criterion of productivity, but by
non-pecuniary or extraneous factors such as sex. Operationally, the most
common forms of discrimination in the labour market are wage
discrimination, whereby women are paid lower wages relative to men in
all industries and occupations for work that is recognisably equal,l and
occupational or job discrimination, whereby women are segregated into
certain 'female' occupations which are generally low-paying. Both these
types of discrimination are fairly common and extensive in Europe and
North America, especially in the U. S. In Pakistan, as in some other
Third World countries, there is another aspect of discrimination which
is even more fundamental than the other two. This refers to the
divergence between myth and reality about women's participation in the
labour force, which is the most visible indicator of their contribution
to economic activity, and hence to development. The reality is that
women's labour force participation is high, measured either in terms of
the percentage of adult women who work, or the proportion of the labour
force that is female, or the hours of work. The myth within Pakistan
(especially among the middle class, urbanites, government officials
including planners and administrators, and even academicians) as well as
outside is that women do not work.
Group 7: Women in the Labour Market