A Case Study of Pakistan Determinants of Female Labour Force in South Asia 7. Discussion and Outlook 7.1. Discussion of Findings This study was an attempt to highlight a long-standing pressing issue of women’s labour force participation. The descriptive analysis of the selected South Asian countries paints a bleak picture of FLFP where mobility, religious beliefs, patriarchal gender roles, social norms are much more pronounced than any other region in the world. Though the LFP is much lower for women than men, this does not hold if we bring the type of work into consideration. In Pakistan, for instance, there is a vast proportion of women rather than men, mainly from lower-income households working in the informal sector. The unjustified and hazardous working conditions that control women’s informal employment in Pakistan show how these women work primarily for survival and do not allow them to realize the empowering effects of income generation. Provincial analysis of FLFP in Pakistan shows a varied trend amongst the four provinces with Punjab having the highest participation levels at all income levels. This could be not only due to relatively higher population size but various other socio-economic factors at play that allow women to participate in the labour economy. The rural-urban divide shows that almost all the provinces have higher FLFP rates in rural areas with the gap decreasing with increasing levels of income. One exception is that of Baluchistan where urban women have higher participation rates than rural women. In addition, for all four provinces, with reduced poverty levels, the incidence of no formal education decreases and the percentage of higher education increases. This is also the case for causal and regular contracts. It should be noted that it is not only due to the poverty factor but a chain of factors for instance, coming from an urban area as opposed to rural area, the province(in this case Punjab), lesser mobility constraints, better access to education facilities so on and so forth that allow higher FLFP. However, education plays a vital role here. The analysis from the labour force survey 2017-18 of Pakistan shows that with increasing levels of education, there is a higher incidence of regular contracts(lower casual ones), and more 49