Labor force or economically active population is defined as the portion of population that is either employed or looking for work. According to the Economic Survey 2006-07 the country’s female labour participation rate was the lowest in South Asia. The participation of male labor force is also not very promising but the participation of female labor force is lowest in Pakistan among all south Asian countries, despite increasing to 18.9 percent in 2005-06 from 15.9 per cent in 2003-04. The South Asian female participation rate is 35-50 per cent.

One of the major challenges faced by Pakistani women concerns the integration of women into labor force. Factors which hinder in female employment are many. First and for most restriction on women’s mobility due to cultural barriers limit their opportunities. Traditional notion of propriety lead families to conceal the extent of work force formed by women thus decreasing their visibility and exposure, which in turn results in lesser opportunities for them.

One of the other important reasons is under remuneration as compared to men for the same work. On the basis of predominant fiction that most women do not work other than their domestic chores, the government has been hesitant to adopt overt policies to increase women’s employment options and to provide legal support for women’s labor force participation.

Due to to the religious misconceptions, Muslim women of Pakistan suffered a great deal of unnecessary restrictions. Due to these misconception women of even poor families are sometimes not allowed to work outside their homes even if the family is starving due to the insufficient family income. Attitude of the family members, relatives, neighbors towards a women’s job. Family problems due to triple burden are one of the important factors too.

Sexual Harrassment is also one of the major problems that deter women from working outside their homes. Difficulty in managing house and children and family conflicts, conveyance problem, undesirable working conditions, insufficient pay and allowances.

The occupational segregation and other constraints related to it restrict the participation of females in the labor market activities, as it discourages women from working outside of homes without any significant improvement in their socio economic conditions due to low pay and remuneration.

Traditional gender roles that are “a wife’s job is to look after the home and the family, and a husband’s job is to earn the money” is also responsible for lesser participation of females in labor force. Having larger number of children is also one of the determining factors in the low participation of women in the labor force especially in lower middle class. As the number of children increase it becomes more difficult for women to join labor force outside her home.

The nature and sphere of women’s productivity in the labor market is largely determined by socio-cultural and the economic factors. Women do not enter the labor market on equal terms vis-à-vis a men.  Their accupational choices are limited due to social and cultural constraints, inherent gender bias in the labor market, and lack of supportive facilities such as child care, transport and accommodation in the formal sectorof the labor market. Women’s labor power is considered inferior because of employers determined notion of women’s primary role as home maker. As a result of discrimination against female labor, women are concentrated in the secondry sector of labor market. Their work is low paid, low status, casual worker, and lacks potential upward mobility.

Policy makers should encourage women’s labor force participation. The United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef) commissioned a national study in 1992 on women’s economic activity to enable policy planners and donor agencies to cut through the existing myths on female labor participation. The study addressed the specification reasons that the assessment of women’s work in Pakistan is filled with discrepancies and under remuneration and provided a comprehensive discussion of the range of informal sector work performed by women throughout the country. The information and the recommendations from this study was also incorporated into the Eighth five yearPlan (1993-1993).

The proper utilization of human and financial resources is already lacking in our society even in case of men but more so in the case of women. The solution to the problem lies in spreading awareness among the parents and husbands of females. The entry of women in the labor market fundamentally changes the status of women in the families as well as in the society and ultimately results in more social inclusion of women.

Some suggestions to increase women’s labor force participation could be providing flexible working time arrangements, support to families with young children, ensuring the availability of conveyance

Technical Education through paid internships is one of the solutions to increase women participation in labor force, because due to the lack of technical expertise women get fewer opportunities to work in the technical jobs. They cannot apply the method of learning by doing as men can. As a policy measure factories and other organizations should provide the facilities of technical education to female employees so that they can become eligible to get technical jobs.

Awareness raising regarding the benefits of female participation in labor force on the media is also very important.

Because of the economic pressure and the dissolution of extended families in urban areas, many more women are working for wages then in the past but by 1990 female officially made up only 13 percent of the labor force.

More and more women (especially urban have engaged in such activities during the 1990s, although to avoid being shamed few families willingly admitted that women contribute to the family economically, hence there is little information about work women do.

The occupational segregation amd other constraints restrict the participation of females in the labour market activities. Therefore Pakistan has the lowest participation of females in the labor force and the employment in the South Asian region [Mehboob ul Haq Human Development. The low participation of females along with pervasive employement and poverty makes economic dependency ratio very high in Pakistan.

Without equal labor force participation of women no country can climb the ladder of development, therefore government should put this agenda at highest priority.