Duality of Female Employment in Pakistan

Abstract

Before proceeding to the main fmdings of the study it is necessary to briefly mention the problems of data collection on women's employment in Pakistan. The shortcomings of official data sources such as the Labour Force Survey and the Population Census have been pointed out in detail elsewhere [Afzal and Nasir (1987); Government of Pakistan (1986)] here it will suffice to state that women's economic participation is greatly underestimated in official statistics mainly due to unsuitable methods of data collection, inappropriate definitions of activities and stress on recording only one activity, and the cultural inhibition to admitting to women working. Given these problems the present study relies primarily on data from intensive micro-level surveys and the Agricultural Census in the case of informal ,sector employment of women since the limitations of official data are particularly " acute in these occupations, while estimates of changes over time in women's share of formal sector jobs (professionals, clerical, administrative and organized industry) are mainly based on Labour Force Survey data.