“People’s Perception about the Effectiveness of Punjab Govt’ Package for Women Empowerment †(A Study of Working Women of District Sargodha & M.B.Din)

There are a lot of problems and issues regarding women, in many other developing countries, a new approach has been developed to deal with women. It is based on gender empowerment, which means the control over resources and proper share in decision-making process. To deal the matter of women empowerment in the context of changing circumstances, different kinds of parameters have been adopted through the different agencies (governmental, non-governmental organizations). So this research was conducted to review the problems and barriers which are against women empowerment in Pakistan. The purpose of this research was to check the effectiveness of a Package announced for women empowerment by the Chief Minister of (Punjab) Pakistan, 2012. The main purpose was also to make sure that would this Package will prove fruitful or would it be a political announcement only. Another important feature of this research was to analyze those traditional and fundamental structures of our society that are responsible for gender discrimination and women disempowerment. Thus the research mainly, grows around the social, political and economic structures of society vis-a-vis the matter of women empowerment. To analyze the different levels of the structure of empowerment, various kinds of sources have been used. The multistage sampling technique was used and by simple random sampling the population of 150 working women, belonging from two different districts (M.B.Din, Sargodha) had been taken for the research purpose. 75 respondents were taken from M.B.Din, 35 respondents were from Private sector and the rest 40 were from Govt. sector. Similarly 75 respondents were selected from Sargodha, in which 35 respondents were from Private sector and the rest 40 were from Govt. sector. The main objectives of this study were to check the knowledge of the people about women related issues, to check the perception of people about woman empowerment, to look over the knowledge, perception and implementation of Women Empowerment Package2012, and to examine the social and cultural barriers in the way of women’s empowerment. At the end results show that majority 58.0 percent of the respondents know that C.M has announced a Package for women empowerment and 42.0 percent of the respondents did not know about this so there should be awareness raising sessions in all public and Govt. offices to make aware these 42% working women about a package which addresses their all human rights. There are 26% working females who do not feel comfortable while working with their male co-workers; so there should be a suitable and friendly environment for women. Majority of the respondents say that harassment is a common problem for all working women; so there should be some harassment committees in all public offices. C.M has enhanced female job quota from 5% to 15%, so all the line departments should be sensitized for the implementation of this quota.