Federal Minister for Planning, Development and Special Initiatives Professor Ahsan Iqbal said that women play a vital role in the development of any country and the development process remains slow where women are not given equal opportunities. The Minister made these remarks while addressing at 19th Inter-Provincial Ministerial Group (IPMG) meeting organized by the National Commission on the Status of Women (NCSW) in collaboration with UN Women, and the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement (INL) of the US Department of State, said a press release issued here. Speaking at the occasion, the minister said that Islam has given equal rights to women but unfortunately, these rights were misinterpreted. Ahsan Iqbal said the Planning Commission has established a Gender Unit in the ministry in which all development projects would be planned according to principles of gender responsiveness so that the projects should not be approved without ensuring the interests of the women. According to the minister, in vision 2025 several projects were added to empower women. Similarly, in recent floods, several initiatives were taken during their rehabilitation. The planning minister assured the NCSW to entertain their recommendations in order to implement them. The objective of the 19th IPMG meeting was to understand the data architecture at the national and provincial levels and finalize the data collection mechanisms for the National Gender Data Portal (NGDP). While welcoming the participants, Chairperson, NCSW Nilofar Bakhtiar said, “The Global Gender Gap Report states Pakistan has closed the gender gap by 56.4 % but still ranks us at second lowest from the bottom. It is important to know our ground reality to form law, legislation, and quotas to bring change.” The NGDP was developed in 2021 to collect high-quality data and evidence on gender statistics from across Pakistan. The Country Representative, UN Women Pakistan Country Office, Sharmeela Rassool emphasized the importance of credible data for the development of the country and for gender equality and said, “IPMG is an innovative platform for identifying solutions that are tailor-made for Pakistan. NGDP is one such example of such solution. Data is important as it helps in identifying gaps in the policy along with helping officials to make informed decisions.” The IPMG was established in 2009 to enhance inter-provincial coordination on gender equality and women’s empowerment in Pakistan. Eighteen meetings have been conducted so far, to facilitate the exchange of experiences and insights between national and provincial women’s machinery.