ISLAMABAD:
The 9th Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) Ministerial Conference on Women kicked off in Islamabad on Sunday, bringing together delegates from across the Muslim world to discuss women’s socio-economic and political empowerment, even as international data highlights uneven progress among member states in education, employment and political representation.
Organized by the Ministry of Human Rights under the theme “Socio-economic and political empowerment of women in OIC countries: Challenges and ways forward”, the two-day conference is being hosted by Pakistan for the first time. Delegates discussed and finalized the agenda on the opening day, with around 190 representatives from the 57 OIC Member States participating in the event.
Around 190 delegates from the 57 OIC Member States are participating in the conference to discuss ways to expand women’s access to education, healthcare, employment, entrepreneurship, financial services, technology and digital opportunities, while strengthening cooperation among Member States.
Federal Minister for Law and Human Rights Azam Nazeer Tarar, who is chairing the conference on behalf of Pakistan, termed it an honorary conference for the country.
The OIC, composed of 57 member states spread across four continents, is the second largest intergovernmental organization in the world after the United Nations. Its Ministerial Conference on Women provides the bloc’s main platform for discussing policies to advance women’s socio-economic and political empowerment, with member states expected to exchange experiences and identify ways to improve women’s participation in education, the economy and public life.
However, beyond the conference proceedings, a review of data from the World Economic Forum (WEF), Pakistan Bureau of Statistics and other international sources shows that while progress has varied among OIC member states, significant gaps remain in women’s education, economic participation and political representation.
Afghanistan represents the most serious example of the challenges facing women’s rights in the Muslim world. The country, where women remain largely excluded from secondary and higher education, many forms of employment and public life under Taliban rule, was not represented at the conference, according to the list of participating delegations.
Taliban authorities have also not publicly confirmed their participation. They also failed to attend a conference held in Pakistan on girls’ education last year. Afghanistan has not been included in the WEF’s Global Gender Gap Index since 2023 because comparable data was not available after the Taliban returned to power.
In the Middle East and North Africa, where most OIC member states are located, progress has also been uneven. According to the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report 2025, the region records the lowest level of women’s political empowerment in the world, having reduced just 10.5% of the gender gap in this category.
Economic participation also remains limited in several countries, including Algeria, Egypt, Iran, Jordan and Sudan, where men’s labor force participation continues to far exceed that of women.
The picture is not uniform, however. The UAE leads the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region in gender parity and women’s political empowerment, ranking 32nd globally in the WEF’s Global Gender Gap Report 2025, while Jordan has a relatively high representation of women in leadership positions, standing at 50%. Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, is among the economies that have made the fastest progress in the world in closing gender gaps since 2006, according to the WEF.
Bangladesh offers another important regional comparison. The predominantly Muslim South Asian country ranks 24th out of 148 economies in the WEF’s 2025 Global Gender Gap Report, making it the highest-ranked country in South Asia. Its performance illustrates that progress on gender equality has differed significantly among OIC Member States, with policy choices and implementation producing widely varying results.
In this broader regional context, Pakistan’s indicators highlight the scale of the challenges facing the conference host country. Pakistan ranks 148th out of 148 countries in the WEF Global Gender Gap Report 2025, placing it last among the seven South Asian countries covered by the index and at the bottom of the ranking among OIC member states.
Perhaps the clearest illustration of these challenges is the disconnect between education and employment. Analysis of Pakistan Bureau of Statistics data by Gallup & Gilani Pakistan shows that female unemployment increases steadily with higher education levels, from less than 5% among women without formal education to almost 24% among those with a master’s, MPhil or PhD.
The figures suggest that although more women are accessing higher education, the economy has not generated enough skilled employment opportunities to absorb them, reflecting broader structural barriers in the labor market as well as constraints such as mobility and skills mismatch.
The broader employment picture reveals similar challenges. The Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) Labor Force Survey (LFS) reports that women’s labor force participation has increased from 21.4% to 24.4% over the past four years, but remains significantly lower than that of men. Nearly half of employed women work as unpaid family workers, while around six in ten are engaged in agriculture, highlighting the concentration of women in informal and low-paid work despite a gradual improvement in their participation.
