Planning Minister Asad Umar on Tuesday launched the National Gender Policy Framework, aimed at tapping the full potential of women who account for half of the country’s population.

“The country cannot progress unless women progress,” he said while addressing a press conference after the launching ceremony of the framework in Islamabad on International Women’s Day.

He was accompanied by women cabinet members and Lieutenant General Nigar Johar Khan, who is the first female general to be appointed to the colonel commandant of Army Medical Corps.

Elaborating on the policy, he said it comprises six areas of development: education, governance, livelihood, health, security, and the section of engagement, political participation and empowerment.

He praised women for their participation in the fight against coronavirus, adding that 76% of the healthcare workers were women (every 3 out of four), 55% of doctors are women and 88% of nurses are female. The planning minister thanked them on behalf of the nation.

Umar said that the framework would put the government’s plan of empowering women into an integrated actionable programme and increase their contribution to the country’s economy.

“Men and women have common issues in the education area. But women face some other issues in our society,” he said and stressed that the country had an overall challenge in the sector to address.

He said that despite having a low level of participation in schools, the country has a gender gap, adding that enrollment rate of girls in schools is lower than that for boys, which increases further from primary to secondary schools.

“The reasons for the fallout from schools are security, distant secondary schools as compared to primary,” he said and suggested the need for establishing more secondary schools or providing adequate transport facilities to the students.

Moreover, he said governance was the second area where the government was planning to add a special section – focused on gender disparity – in the development outcome of PSDP’s PC-I.

He further stressed the need for ensuring livelihood for women after education. “Women employment is undercounted as we have unpaid labourers,” he said and called for improvement in the metrics for measurement. Umar was of the view that there were issues for women in employment places – pertaining to the evaluating areas for professional growth and development.

“We need to remove bias in institutional settings and bring areas for evaluation,” he said. Separately, he also tweeted the launching ceremony.

Umar called for ending the perception that women only have to bear children. Then he talked about the area of security, saying that “there are certain challenges for women.”

The planning minister said that engagement and political participation and empowerment were difficult but the “most important” challenge. He called for bringing “changes at ground level” to bring women to the forefront and pondered on the local government rights.

“One of the important goals is to increase women's participation in politics,” he said.

Earlier, Human Rights Minister Shireen Mazari shared her message on Women's Day in a video post. She urged women to come together for their rights.