A Case Study of Pakistan Determinants of Female Labour Force in South Asia the index is constructed and what factors are included, explains a lot about the discriminatory laws against women. For instance, in Pakistan, the law does not obligate equal pay for equal work, the government does not provide childcare services and women are not able to work in the same industry as men(The World Bank, 2021). This is the situation for most of the other South Asian countries and not just Pakistan. In addition, the unsatisfactory performance on the Global Gender Gap index explained earlier shows that indices alone cannot be a true reflection of the actual state of affairs. A lot depends on what factors are included, the weights given to each factor, and its computational methodology. 2.4. Education Psacharopoulos& Tzannatos(1989) highlighted that out of all the factors, education is the one crucial factor that the governments should focus on if they wish to increase the FLFPR. Higher education would impact women’s economic empowerment and contribute to their decision-making power, choice and agency in important domains of the household, leading to greater labour market activity. Naqvi et al.(2003) analyzed how women in Pakistan decide to participate in the labour market using cross-sectional data from the Pakistan Integrated Household Survey(1998). Their study highlighted that the employment status of the head of the family(most likely a male), younger children, and having a male member in the house are significant factors that affect a woman’s decision. Their finding related to education asserted that higher levels of education, primarily secondary, would improve the chances of labour participation by 19.7%. Heckman et al.(2011) and Rahman& Islam (2013) also noted increasing returns to the labour market at every level of education. However, Chatterjee et al.(2018) observed that women with secondary levels of education(moderately educated) have lesser chances of being in the labour force than women with no education or high levels of education, suggesting a“U-shaped” relationship between the two. Similarly, Najeeb et al.(2020) in their research, showed that women with secondary levels of education had lower chances of employment than those with primary levels of education in the year 2015. However, the probability increased for those with tertiary levels of education. For instance, in Pakistan, in 1999, women with post-secondary education were 22% more likely to be in the labour 6