A Partnership in Weeding Out Gender Inequalities
Four thousand twenty-four startups that provide high-quality service to diverse populations can drive industry growth while also addressing poverty. Pakistan joins them. Comparing statistics from 2011 to 2018, we have examined the number of startups coming from women founders as well as the number of women founders transitioning into the IT sector, the numbers of women founders in the IT sector, and the number of top talents in the IT sector.
The results point to an obvious consensus: most female founders are quite pleased with their performance. On the other hand, a major number of Pakistani women entrepreneurs are not comfortable leveraging their skills and experience to optimize their skills to serve customers. Pakistani women are 80% more educated than male engineers but 74% of female engineers are women of color, and over 84% of women engineers who are female of color work in engineering positions with no female engineers based in the IT sector.
This discrepancy is a further indicator of women’s willingness to use their skills to push the envelope. Female engineers now have multiple other options than Software Engineering. But their appeal goes well beyond these opportunities. Women and men work side by side, and women engineers are making women directors, managers, and chief technical officers. The biggest tech event in Pakistan, Pakistan Pakistan ICT Forum, last year saw women participate in more than 400 programs related to technology and are shown on TV because half of the attendees are women. This may sound like just a little show, but this showcases the eagerness of the Pakistani population to embrace these opportunities. Moreover, we have seen the number of women applying for the Pakistan-based IT visas grow.
From Frontline at Banking to Developing Skills to Accelerate the Private Sector in Pakistan
Another example illustrates how women entrepreneurs can have an impact even outside the IT sector. During the last 5 years, Pakistan has made significant progress on the road to globalization and freer trade. In the first five years of business, Pakistan has widened the trade routes and made many major agreements with Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Iran, China, India, and many other Asian countries. These agreements have opened Pakistan to more than 50 countries and expanded its ability to produce and sell goods and services that are in high demand around the world. A significant number of women in Pakistan today are now the leading businesspeople in a range of areas such as banking, software development, travel, and health care, IT, and more. The numbers of female entrepreneurs in these fields are growing at a rapid pace.
Like the percentage of women entrepreneurs in IT, Pakistan now has numerous young female entrepreneurs who are pursuing businesses to scale up their existing services and pay off their student loans and even to contribute to philanthropic initiatives. In 2014, a group of young female businesswomen started a new website called “Go Time” that addresses the needs of businesswomen in Pakistan. Today, Go Time supports more than 11,000 Pakistani businesswomen to undertake digital transformation projects. The organization is an emerging success story of both women entrepreneurs and state agencies.
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