Abstract

In most democratic developing countries, including Pakistan, one of the most crucial and yet least prioritised domains is reforms in the status of women’s rights (WEF 2015). There are many organisations and programmes at the international and national level trying to influence countries to improve women’s rights policies and practices such as the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women; Pakistan’s commitment to meeting the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs); and its National Commission on the Status of Women (NCSW). 

In this study, a survey was conducted to explore the impact of national and international endorsement of the policies intended to improve women’s rights in Pakistan. The survey was designed to see under which conditions respondents would support more policies focusing on women’s rights. The two conditions in the survey were framed in such a way that the proposed reforms came from the National Government (National condition) or by the United Nations (International condition). As a comparative baseline, we added a control condition in which the source of proposals was not mentioned (Control-condition). 

The survey was conducted with 618 university students (males: 51%; and females: 49%). Data was collected from the students of Quaid-i-Azam University, and the Pakistan Institute of Development Economics (PIDE), Islamabad, from March-August 2016. Results of the survey indicated that compared to the control condition, the respondents in the national and international condition expressed higher support for policy reforms for women’s rights. Furthermore, participants in the national and international condition were more likely to offer help in the implementation of these policy reforms. On the policy side, the survey supports the claim that national level endorsement of reforms, compared to a United Nations endorsement, makes propagation and acceptance of women’s rights reforms easier for the general public.  

Reference

WEF 2015, ‘The Global Gender Gap Report’, World Economic Forum, Geneva, Switzerland, <http://reports.weforum.org/global-gender-gap-report-2015/>, accessed 30 September 2016.