A possible answer to Maheen's question: Patriarchal Pakistani society

Hi Maheen,

In the following, I am commenting on your last post.

If you say that gender inequality is not in accordance to Islam, and thus not to any religious background, I believe that the reason may also not just be “a number of deeply-rooted discriminatory socio-cultural values and traditions” (according to the journal Ed posted), but I do believe that the shift from patriarchism to gender equality starts with the economic shift from agriculture to industrialism.

This can be well explained with the development of another country that has already experienced this shift, which is my home country Germany.

In Germany, compulsory school attendance, also for girls, became mandatory not before the 19th century, and till 1919, women in Germany were not allowed to elect. Further, till the beginning of the 20th century it was common that girls were educated only with the intention to become a good housewife – similar to Pakistan nowadays. Till then, almost no girl did apprenticeships or studied because the classical role allocation was the following. The man did an apprenticeship and then became an employee or employer, or took over the parents' farm, while the woman stayed at home and gave birth to as many children as necessary – again similar to Pakistan. People wanted to have a huge quantity of children, as they needed them as manpower on their farms - thus in terms of agriculture. During the 20^th century, agriculture decreased because industrialization increased, which means that more and more jobs were created and the demand for skilled workers increased, too. This had the consequence that also women did apprenticeships and in the course of time, gender equality developed. 

According to CIA World Factbook, Germany’s GDP composition (by sector of origin)*¹ is, nowadays, as follows:

• Agriculture: 0.8 %
• Industry: 30.1 %
• Services: 69 %

…whereas Pakistan’s GDP composition (by sector of origin)*² is:

• Agriculture: 25.3 %
• Industry: 21.6 %
• Services: 53.1 %

To formulate this cautiously (because I don’t know Pakistan as a country, and do not like to say something wrong about your home country), for me this shows that Pakistan has, in comparison to Germany, not yet had such a development from agriculture to value adding industries, (which can also be seen by the comparison of GDP per capita: Germany’s is almost ten times higher than Pakistan’s.)

Therefore, the key to give Pakistani women more independence and freedom to do a career is the development of the country’s economy.

Nevertheless, I admit it would be naïve to believe this would be the only solution, but also the “social move” (as Benazir Bhutto named it in her speech on Youtube) in terms of culture and traditions is indispensable.

According to the journal “Leadership at the grassroots: positioning women in patriarchal society”*³ (to be found on our EBSCO uni website), in Patriarchal societies (like Pakistan), even those women having succeeded to become a politician are the victims of male politics, and thus only their male colleagues’ puppets. Consequently, the shift to gender equality and thus more female business owners probably starts with economic development (as I explained above), but it is also dependent on “the media, educational policy makers and government agencies (that) should join forces to provide improved access to business development services (BDS) and the facilitation of a local, regional and national network for women entrepreneurs, thereby assisting them to become more integrated into the mainstream economy” (according to the journal Ed posted).

Unfortunately this whole debate does not directly have to do with the topic ‘family business’, but indirectly it does indeed. I think the way family businesses are managed is always closely linked to the country's culture and characteristics. To link this to Nkem’s last post, the success of family business succession is dependent on the fact if a really competent successor is found. This probability is immensely reduced if only men are entitled to a professional education and to make a career - because this reduces the number of employees and thus of possible successors. One can further argue that, as a consequence, the success of family businesses in Pakistan would increase if Pakistani women got the same right to go to school, university and to make a career, too - which sounds like a good reason to change something.

(Sources: 

*1:  https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/gm.html

*2:  https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/pk.html

*3:  http://ehis.ebscohost.com/eds/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=1a8f140c-c7b7-4e98-9367-cdb28a64293c%40sessionmgr114&vid=2&hid=111 )