Daily Times

LAHORE: The Peace & Development Foundation (PDF), a non-profit organisation working for interfaith harmony and women’s rights, held a press conference on Saturday at the Lahore Press Club to share with the media findings and recommendations of a study it undertook to evaluate the implementation of 15 percent job quota for women and five percent job quota for minorities.

According to the data collected through the Punjab Commission on the Status of Women, most of the 327 departments approached by the commission did not respond. And a large majority of the 121 departments and institutions that did, reported that the job quota was not being met.

Thirty-two out of 121 provincial departments/institutions that responded, met the 15 percent quota requirement for women. The figures for implementation of 15 percent quota for women in public service employments in district offices showed that 258 district offices were approached to assess the status of implementation and 59 out of the 186 district offices that responded, reported compliance.

The study showed evidence that the quota system did, to some extent, help rectify women’s underrepresentation in the public sector but women still faced many challenges due to the work-life balance and cultural issues as well as religious interpretation that stereotyped women’s roles.

There was no systematic evaluation mechanism in the public sector to gauge how the quota regime for minorities was performing, especially for women. Through meetings with representatives of women and minority organizations, and women job aspirants, the study found out that some women from minority faiths did benefit from the jobs quota but there were others who faced double discrimination; one because of their gender and another being a member of a religious minority. The lack of a conducive working environment, especially in distant postings, gender insensitive and discriminatory attitudes among management and colleagues, were the main barriers several women had to face.

Exacerbating social discrimination and stereotypes against minorities, many municipalities filled their five percent quota by employing only minorities as sanitation workers. On the other hand, during 2016, 744 vacancies remained unfilled for want of qualified candidates because women from minority faiths lagged particularly far behind in education.

After evaluating the effectiveness of gender and minorities quota in public jobs, the study has witnessed a significant progress in women’s representation in some government departments such as education and health, while in others there has almost been no change. To bridge the gap, the study has gathered a set of recommendations for the Punjab government and the chief security officers. In order to be effective in ending exclusion of women, in general, and those from minority faiths, in particular, from public jobs, the government and its policy, monitoring and enforcement arms will have to work in unison. The recommendations are that all government offices need to comply with the 15 percent job quota requirement for women and 5 percent for minorities. Individuals with good credibility and devoid of biased opinion should be added to the recruitment process and gender- and minority sensitive trainings should be arranged for all employees on induction and during service. Gender balanced and diverse faith composition should be made between men and women during the recruitment process by the selection boards. Incorporating women to these bodies or, at least, integrating some feminine presence in them will help to improve the status of implementation of job quota.

The government should promulgate gender-neutral laws and encourage women to harmonise work and family to excel in their careers with increased participation opportunities in the women’s workforce. It should promote family-friendly working conditions which enable fathers and mothers to balance their working hours and their family responsibilities and facilitate women to participate more in public sector employment by: designing tax-benefit systems so that both parents have broadly similar financial incentives to work; and securing availability of and access to affordable good-quality early childhood education and care as well as affordable long-term care for other dependants, including, for example, disabled children or elderly relatives.

Physical tests scheduled in the call should be postponed if there is pregnancy or childbirth and the vacancy should remain open and conditional upon successful completion of the other tests.

According to the Punjab Public Service Commission, the government needs to encourage underrepresented groups/sections to acquire qualifications and competence to pass exams and be held eligible for various posts. Alternatively, the government may consider the best failures as a one-time measure, subject to do some mandatory trainings relevant to the post.

The government should also strengthen accountability mechanisms for gender equality and mainstreaming initiatives across and within government bodies. Through the Punjab Commission on the Status of Women, it should conduct systematic gender-impact assessments.

Published in Daily Times, July 15^th 2018.