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Degraded urban environments disproportionately affect marginalized populations, and especially impoverished women in South Asia's informal settlements, where climate change vulnerabilities and gender inequalities are extreme. A comparative analysis was conducted of three neighboring countries, India, Bangladesh, and Pakistan, where urban environments, climate risks, and gender relations exhibit significant variances. With original survey data from 12 informal settlements across New Delhi, Dhaka, Islamabad, and Lahore, it was found that women are less empowered than men in all three countries, but their determinants related to environmental degradation and climate change vary. Qualitative data from key informants reveals several explanatory mechanisms of observed differences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since early years of the 20th century, feminism has built a body of theory and in recent decades' women empowerment has been suggested as a mechanism to improve the quality of women's work as well as their personal lives. The empowerment of women is an essential precondition for the elimination of world poverty and the upholding of human rights. Women are about half of the population of Pakistan, they are active participants in every walk of life. But women participation as extension workers was discouraged in agriculture sector, extension wing due to field work nature of this job as it was considered as male oriented job only. Later on, during the last years of the first decade of this century the hiring of female extension workers by the Department of Agriculture (Extension and Adaptive Research) Government of the Punjab, Pakistan become a possibility. The study was conducted at Institute of Agri. Extension and Rural Development, University of Agriculture, Faisalabad, Punjab, Pakistan during 2018-19. All the female agriculture officials working in agriculture extension, livestock and poultry sectors were the population of the study. In first step through proportionate stratified sampling technique 49 respondents from agriculture extension, 64 from livestock and 17 respondents from poultry sector were taken forming a sample size of 130 respondents. In second step, the respondents were randomly selected from each stratum. The data were collected from selected respondents through pretested interview schedule. The quantitative data and qualitative data were analyzed, and the data revealed that most of the respondents belonged to middle age group having master's degree and 1-3-year experience, half of the respondents were married with non-farming background. The major social constraints faced by the respondents in the field were identified as: male dominance, non-acceptance (unrecognition) as working lady, family responsibilities and harassment issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a critical feminist political economy of women's entrepreneurship promotion in Pakistan. Women's entrepreneurship is the new development mantra that has captured the imagination of global institutions, policymakers, business organizations, and academia alike. We argue in this article that this focus on entrepreneurship should be located, on one hand, within the gendered political economy of Pakistan, and on the other hand, as part of the broader project of transnational business feminism, which works to frame gender equality as "smart economics" and as compatible with the neoliberal agenda of privatization, deregulation, and financialization. Drawing on primary research conducted on a women's entrepreneurship training program in Pakistan, this article goes on to evidence how one such program is designed and delivered and critically interrogates the impacts of this program on those it is supposed to empower. The findings of our research point to tensions between the global discourses that explicitly inform projects like the one we study and the implementation of programs in specific local contexts, troubling the assertion that there is a smooth equation between entrepreneurship, economic growth, and women's empowerment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Livestock is the main source of income mainly for small and nomadic families in rural areas. Rural people involve their child; especially female child for animal production and management. Women played a vital role in livestock production in each corner of the world. Present study was conducted to analyze the gender role for the sustainable production of livestock. This study was conducted in tehsil Gujar Khan, district Rawalpindi in 2014-15. The required data were collected using a validated and pre-tested interview schedule from 120 randomly selected respondents. The data were then analyzed with the help of computer software Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS). The research indicated that role of women in livestock management was highly better than men on households level particularly in cleaning, milking, diseases management and fodder cutting. However, role of women was undermined associated with number of challenges including mobility and inadequate access to different information and training sources. Findings also indicated clear decision-making powers gap between men and women as men were superior in decision making. It is need of an hour to transit equal status to women and participation in decision-making for improved household management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews feminist critiques, both on conceptual and empirical grounds, of the contention that microcredit empowers women. It also reviews other critiques of microcredit as being pushed by a neo-liberal agenda to extend the domain of the market or as a development panacea while not really representing authentic development. It makes a case for privileging women’s perception and voice and adds to the literature that does this using a case study from Pakistan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]