英语论文网

-cultural norms as Blood and Wolfe (1960) proposes long ago that the cultural norms and expectation have a direct impact on the family decision influence structure and division of labour.

In Pakistan at the end of 1990s among married couples with children less than 6 years of age, 41 % of mothers were employed (bureau of Statistics 2008). One might expect women have increased labor force participation to influence men’s and women’s Participation in household tasks. In fact, research shows that on changes in gender role attitudes have found a general liberal trend of increasing support for egalitarian roles (Iglehart 1982, Jorgenson & Tanner 1983 National Election Study 1999).

The female participation rates can later recover when the proportional contribution of additional income to family welfare declines as GDP per capita increases. This weakens the negative income effect. Female participation can increase due to appositive substitutione ffect when female wages start rising (Mincer, 1964; Ashenfelter and Layard, 1984; Goldin, 1990). This stylized exposition describes much of the process underlying changes in female participation rates over periods of growth.

The World Bank Country Gender Profile of Pakistan (1999) deplores the fact that the status of women in Pakistan is among the lowest in the world. UNDP (1996) describes the strong “inside/outside” dichotomy in Pakistan, where women are restricted to the “inside” space of home and household, embodied in the tradition of veiling. This restricts women's access to education, employment, training opportunities and social services. Samina (1997) highlights another important aspect by stating that the social disapproval of women working outside the home translates into the invisibility of women in the labour force. Although they participate actively in the family and farm affairs, their unpaid work is perceived as a social duty rather than an economic contribution. Stiglitz (1998) in his paper on gender has lamented the poor indicators of Pakistan compared with other developing countries.

Pakistan needs to go a long way to achieve a balanced and sustainable development scenario (Mahmood and Nayab, 1998). For women, the access to money-earning activities, amongst others, is an important means to improve their position (Polachek and Robst, 1997). Furthermore, employment is the main bridge between economic growth and opportunities for human development (UNDP, 1996). One of the factors that boosted growth rates in the Asian tigers was the rapidly rising female labor force participation rate (Young, 1995). The access of mothers to income-generating opportunities impacts positively on the well-being of children, particularly daughters, indicating that parents’ relative bargaining positions affect children’s gender equity (Thomas, 1990; Haddad and Haddinot, 1995).

Moreover, it was also observed that married women with children earn less than women without children. However, married women may continue their economic activity or enter the labor force as new entrants if they get good wages, (Ofer and Vinokur, 1983), social security benefits after retirement (McGratten and Rogerson, 2004), the husband has a good attitude towards their work (Huth, 1978), professional education, and good returns to their education. Labor force experience also contributes to the continuation of work since the difference in the hourly wage rat