Urban households in Pakistan are under increasing financial pressure.
Karachi:
Amina Sohail weaves through heavy traffic to reach the next lane – within sight of a woman on a motorbike exploring the eyes of the megacity of Karachi, not Pakistan. The 28-year-old is the first woman in her family to enter the workforce, a rising parent in Pakistan’s increasingly financially squeezed urban families.
“I don’t focus on people, I don’t do anything, I don’t do my job,” said Suhail, who joined a local car service at the beginning of the year to ferry women through the city’s side streets.
“Before we spent time, we can now do less work with three meals a day,” he added.
Amina Sohail leaves to deliver parcels in Karachi
Image source: AFP
The South Asian nation is in a cycle of political and economic crises, and relies on bailouts from the International Monetary Fund and loans from friendly nations to pay off its debts.
Prolonged inflation has seen prices of basic products, such as tomatoes, rise by 100 percent. Electricity and gas bills are expected to rise by 300 percent compared to July last year, according to second official data.
Sohail helped me cook, clean and take care of two new trees, so that the family, the only winner in the family, is adoeceu.
“The atmosphere at home was stressful,” she said, as the family relied on other relatives for money. “That’s when I thought I had to work.”
“Minha Viao Modu. I will act openly like any other man, no matter what I think.”
“marry her”
Pakistan was the first Muslim country to have a female prime minister in the 1980s, female CEOs have appeared on Forbes power lists, and now fill the ranks of the police and armed forces.
However, most of Pakistani society operates under a traditional law that requires women to obtain their family's permission to work outside the home.
According to the United Nations, only 21% of women participate in the Pakistani workforce, most of them in the informal sector and mostly in rural areas, working in the fields.
“This was the first time the family started working, either on the father’s or mother’s side,” said Hina Saleem, 24, a telephone operator at a factory in Korangi, a major industrial area in Karachi.
Receptionist Hina Saleem fails to contact Koro factory in Karachi
Image source: AFP
This move, which was supported by his mother after his father's death, was met with resistance from his family.
His first job was recently warned that the job could lead to socially unacceptable behavior, such as finding a husband from his school.
“My uncles said 'no casa',” he told AFP. “I had a lot of pressure on my mother.”
During the shift change outside the churro factory, workers board buses painted and decorated with the sins of Telintando, with a group of women walking out amidst a crowd of men.
Anum Shahzadi, 19, who works in the same dice-entering factory, was encouraged by her home countries to enter the workforce after finishing high school, unlike previous generations.
“What is the point of education if a girl cannot be independent?” said Shahzadi, who now contributes to the family alongside the family.
Anum Shahzadi sorts jackets at a leather factory in Karachi.
Image source: AFP
Bushra Khaliq, executive director of Women in Struggle for Empowerment (WISE), which advocates for women's political and economic rights, said Pakistan was “experiencing a change” among urban, middle-class women.
“Now, society has said that taking care of the home and marriage is the ultimate goal,” she told AFP.
“But the economic crisis and the unconventional social and economic crises bring with them many opportunities.”
“We are comrades”
Farzana Augustine, a Christian minority in Pakistan, got her first paycheck last year, at the age of 43, after losing or losing her husband during the Covid-19 pandemic.
“My wife has to assume that,” Augustine Siddiq told AFP.
“But there is no reason to be sad, we are comrades and we take care of our home together.”
The sprawling port city of Karachi, officially home to 20 million people but officially much more, is the commercial hub of Pakistan.
It attracted immigrants and businessmen from all over the country with the promise of employment and often served as a bellwether for social change.
Zahra Afzal, 19, moved to Karachi to live with her uncle for four years, then died in two countries, leaving her small village in central-east Pakistan to work as a housewife.
“If Zahra had been raised by other parents, she would not have been married anymore,” her uncle Kamran Aziz told AFP in her model home, a comfortable room where bed covers were folded and food was empty on the table.
“My wife and I decided to go against the grain and raise our children to live in the world before we found them.”
Afdal asserts that he is now an example of his first impression: “My mind is renewed.”
(Except that this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
