UN WOMEN Pakistan focuses on delivering on gender equality commitments in Pakistan through catalytic and innovative approaches. One of key area of UN WOMEN is to provide technical advice around the formulation of the National Employment Policy and contributions towards formulation of a policy on Home Based Workers (HBW)/ Home based Women Workers (HBWW) in the coming years. The CEDAW Committee also expressed concern about the situation of women engaged in the informal sector, especially the home-based workers who do not enjoy protection under labour laws. In this regard UIFEM Pakistan has proposed an intervention, which focuses on three important concurrent yet stand alone interventions to promote women’s economic empowerment in Pakistan.
The three proposed interventions are:
- Working with government and civil society representatives to strengthen the gender equity dimensions of the forthcoming National Employment Policy, so that ongoing employment policies and initiatives shall take better account of women’s employment issues;
- Supporting the development of a Home Based Workers Policy with the hope of improving the very poor working conditions of the many women in Pakistan undertaking home based work; and
- Coordinating an integrated services approach to women’s training and employment in one town, together with international and local partners, to showcase the improvements possible with dedicated effort.
The outcomes from these initiatives will be:
– an increase in numbers of legal frameworks and processes that promote and protect women’s rights
– building blocks towards the goal of increased national commitment and action to improve the status of women in Pakistan.
In particular the intervention seeks to contribute to the reduction of poverty and gender inequality in Pakistan through strengthening legislation and policies and also processes to reduce the gender biases against women workers and in particular home based workers.