Equal rights and equal opportunities for women have remained a distant dream waiting to be realized in Pakistan. But instead of providing institutional support and expanding the avenues of empowering women to enjoy equal opportunities, our laws, customs and behavioural practices have been restricting the scope of their participation in national affairs.
Equal rights and equal opportunities for women have remained a distant dream waiting to be realized in Pakistan. But instead of providing institutional support and expanding the avenues of empowering women to enjoy equal opportunities, our laws, customs and behavioural practices have been restricting the scope of their participation in national affairs.
It is a sad reflection of our patriarchal social, economic and political culture that, as per the World Economic Forum (WEF), men have monopolized 95 per cent of the executive positions in Pakistan, leaving a meagre five per cent for the 50 per cent of the population of the country -- the lowest participation by women in South Asia. In providing equal opportunities for employment and economic development to women at all levels, Pakistan again ranks among the bottom 25 out of the 189 countries in World Bank and Council for Foreign Relations rankings.
What these low rankings tell us is that we have not taken conscious measures to remove old barriers and prejudices to equal treatment and equal opportunities for women. The regressive rules and environment introduced during the 1980s have encouraged some men to think that it is their privilege to prescribe the parameters within which women would have access to education, employment and participation in social, economic and political life of the nation. Equality and equal opportunities seem alien to that mindset.
Who doesn’t know the patriarchal and offensive atmosphere prevailing in both public and private sector organizations in Pakistan, including the banking sector? Walking into the big shiny buildings of the banks with their staff mostly comprising men -- from chowkidars through the mid-level to the senior management -- with very poor education and training in human rights including those relating to women, and arguing their case before them is a Herculean job even for educated and enterprising women.
Reforming this misogynist behaviour will only be possible if we consciously undertake reforms to curb it and provide specialized institutions to open new avenues for their empowerment to counter the negativity. Otherwise, the education and entrepreneurial skills of millions of women would be wasted and neither they nor the nation would benefit from that investment and hard work.
Until the dreams of those reforms are realized, it is necessary to take the initiative and provide specialized institutional support to under-served areas of our social and economic life. One such successful initiative was creating a special platform for promoting investment in the country and relaxing the regulatory environment -- for which the Board of Investment was established in February1989. This was essential because the existing institutions and their archaic rules had made it next to impossible to tap foreign direct investment (FDI) for the development of the country.
The other such initiative was creating the First Women Bank (FWB) because the existing tall shiny bank buildings overwhelmingly staffed by men had grossly under-served even educated and entrepreneurial women -- much less allowing financial access to less privileged women.
For that reason, the First Women Bank was established in November 1989 to fill this vacuum. It was to be fully staffed by women, from the lowest ranks to the highest, so that any woman -- not just the educated and the well-off -- needing a small loan to start her business could walk into the bank building, talk confidently to the relevant women officers and access the banking facilities for their upward mobility.
It is important to remind ourselves of the reality of the legal, social and cultural barriers women encounter in our society in order to realize why such a specialized financial institution is needed. It was this realization which brought out the idea of setting up the First Women Bank to overcome the barriers and provide access to credit for women from all walks of life. This was during the first term of Benazir Bhutto (1988-90) the first woman prime minister not only of Pakistan but also in the Muslim world.
As the person in-charge of finance and economic ministries in the PM’s Secretariat, it was my job to lay out a plan of action and establish this bank. First in the series of measures was to get the support of the five main banks to put equity into the First Women Bank and set up the processes of getting necessary permissions for establishing a new bank with this specialized mandate.
Its essential feature was that it would be 100 per cent staffed and managed by women themselves and be different in its mandate and working from the usual commercial banks. The purpose was to make it comfortable for women -- from even the humblest background -- to walk in confidently, ask questions and access banking facilities for whatever business idea or skill they had to deploy for their own betterment.
Simultaneously, I started searching for the president of the new bank and requested presidents of the five major banks to send names of women bankers. On interviewing 6-7 candidates, I found Ms Akram Khatoon who was then a mid-level officer at MCB to be a serious, conservative and balanced banker, and most suitable to become the first president of the First Women Bank and requested the prime minister to approve her name.
The purpose of explaining the origin of the First Women Bank is to underline the fact that the old barriers are still around, and a specialized bank focused on empowering women by providing them access to credit in a congenial environment staffed by women themselves is still very much needed. The First Women Bank is not like other commercial banks of Pakistan and its special features should not be compromised if we really want to increase women’s participation in the economic life of the nation and reduce the barriers against them.
Unfortunately, the special nature of the First Women Bank has largely been compromised with male officers running the bank and women pushed into the background. This is not a reflection on the merits of the men working in the bank but to highlight the fact that this is a women’s bank, meant for women’s empowerment and to be 100 per cent staffed by women. They cannot usurp positions meant for women bankers. The First Women Bank’s privatization and creating another general-purpose commercial bank would be a severe blow to women’s participation in national life.
While privatization of the notorious white elephants must be carried out, it is hoped that the raison d’ etre of the First Women Bank will be kept in mind as its privatization into a general-purpose commercial bank in private sector would deprive women from benefiting from the only public institution designed to increase their participation in national life in which Pakistan already cuts a sorry figure even among South Asian countries.
Even otherwise, the socio-economic empowerment of the weaker sections of society falls squarely within the duties and functions of a democratic government since such functions cannot be performed by the private sector.
It is hoped that the original features of the First Women Bank will be strengthened, and its branches established in every district so that financial empowerment opportunities are extended to even the humblest women living in different parts of the country and not just those in big cities.
The writer designed the Board of Investment and the First Women Bank. Email: smshah@alum.mit.edu
