A Case Study of Pakistan Determinants of Female Labour Force in South Asia To conclude, women education is contingent upon the financial resources of the family(middle or upper class in terms of living standards), location of the household(rural or urban), size of the household(number of children), and most importantly, awareness of the rights of women. To what extent these factors apply to the case of Pakistan as well? For that, the next section presents the education scenario in the country. 5.3. The case of Pakistan Shortly after independence in 1947, Pakistan’s founder Muhammad Ali Jinnah sent a message to the conference saying," the future of our state will and must greatly depend on the type of education we give to our children " (Quaid-e-Azam Educational Complex, n.d.). A commission in 1959 especially stressed the women’s education that stated“ unless a mother is educated, there will never be an educated home or an educated community ” (UNESCO, 1987). There had been multiple education commissions till 1993 but education has always remained“unabashedly elitist”(Easterly, 2001, p. 19). Not only this, but culture and other socio-economic reasons are a constraint to women’s education in Pakistan. The factors are not different from South Asia in general. They include but are not limited to mobility constraints, especially in rural areas where girls have to walk to school, child marriages, poverty and a culture in which girls’ education is undervalued compared to boys. Consequently, women are kept at home for house chores(Hunter, 2020). These reasons stem from a lack of decision-making power in the house. This is not only concerning education but all other decisions which could potentially make the women aware of their rights are curtailed and infringed upon as well-explained“ A male power elite could decide to keep women uneducated so that women do not have the skills necessary to petition for more equal treatment ”(Easterly, 2001, p. 4). According to Pakistan Social and Living Standards Measurement Survey 2005-06, in more than 75% of the cases other household members decide where the woman should work(Eric Field & Vyborny, 2016). Another significant point to mention here is the difference in the“choice” of male and female subjects. As Mendick(2013) rightly says,“ gender is constructed within social practices, including science and mathematics ” (Mendick, 2013, p. 207). Therefore, aside from the internal factors, numerous sociological debates center around external factors, for instance, patriarchal 31