Inequality of opportunity – gender bias in education in Pakistan

Abstract

The subject matter of the paper is inequality of opportunity (IO). Contemporarily, as part of IO, gender bias in education is most likely to be a constraint for growth and development in developing countries. The focus is on gender bias in education in Pakistan, which is a widely discussed problem thanks to the Nobel Prize laureate Malali Yousufzai. The goal is to present the premise and potential consequences of unequal access to education for Pakistanis, and to bring the specifics of the country into clearer focus. The thesis is that gender bias in education in Pakistan is determined by various and deeply rooted factors that place equal access to education in the realm of a distant goal, hampering the growth and development of the economy. The research methods used were a critique of the literature, analysis of statistical data, documents and online sources as well as elements of case study. Plans concerning education have been sketched in SDG-4 and in the document “Pakistan 2025”, but despite some improvements, Pakistan is still a country where one’s future depends on whether one is male or female. A lack of access to education for girls is part of a broader landscape of gender and spatial inequality. The findings suggest that the main circumstances for the exclusion of girls from education are culture, poverty and the state. If recommendations for these areas are not implemented, gender bias will remain one of the barriers to the growth and development of Pakistan.