Growing access to smartphones and Internet connectivity is transforming the lives of women in rural Pakistan. They are acquiring knowledge, accessing healthcare and finding economic opportunities.  A recent UNDP report  titled "DigitAll: What happens when women of Pakistan get access to digital and tech…

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Female labor force participation rate in India has recently fallen to just 19%, the second lowest after Afghanistan's 15% in the South Asia region. By contrast, Pakistan's women's labor force participation rate is 21%, Sri Lanka's 31% and Bangladesh's 35%. Prime Minister Narendra Modi's mishandling of the COVID19 pandemic has hit Indian women particularly hard, with 90% of…

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Judge Ayesha Malik has been confirmed as Pakistan's first woman Supreme Court judge in the face of strong opposition by the majority of sitting judges of the top court and Pakistan Bar Council. It was two  affirmative votes by the PTI government representatives that helped her win 5-4 confirmation in the Supreme Judicial Council (SJC). Only two of the five sitting Supreme Court judges who are members of the SJC supported her confirmation. …

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Pakistan-born, Harvard-educated economist Ms. Saadia Zahidi, author of "50 Million Rising", is currently a member of the executive committee and the head of Education, Gender and Work at the…

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Pakistani filmmaker Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy has earned two Oscars by bringing world's attention to women's abuse in Pakistan. She has shamed Pakistani politicians and society at large into a series of actions to put an end to violence against women. Alas, there appears to be little attention paid to women's abuse in…

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What do Mumtaz Qadri’s execution and Punjab women protection bill say about Pakistan’s determination to fight religious extremism? Can the Pakistani state deal with the street power of the religious parties? How will this struggle for the soul of Pakistan play out?…



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The 3-day Telenor Fashion Pakistan Week 2015 (TFPW2015) ended in Karachi Thursday April 2, 2015.  Designers presenting latest fashions at the show included HSY, Nida Azwer, Sadaf Malaterre and Sania Maskatiya, Zara Shahjahan, Deepak Perwani, Amir Adnan, Sanam Chaudhri, Yousuf Qureshi, Shameel Ansari and Somal Halepoto. Here are some of the latest fashions presented  at the show:…





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Hannah Dehradunwala, a Pakistani-American student at New York University, has co-founded Transfernation, a nonprofit startup with the aim of alleviating hunger beginning with New York City and Karachi. She has partnered with a fellow NYU student Samir Goel, an American of Indian descent. It's essentially an app and a… Continue

Vida, a  San Francisco technology startup co-founded by Umaimah Mendhro from Akri village in Sindh, Pakistan, has received $1.3 million funding from Google Ventures, Universal Music Group and others, according to Tech Crunch.…



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Shama Zehra, Shaan Kandawalla, Shahzia Sikandar and Fatima Ali are among the many Pakistani-American women making their mark in America.



Shama Zehra is in finance, Shaan Kandawalla in technology, Shazia Sikandar in the Arts and Fatima Ali in fine cuisine.…



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While Fareed Zakaria, Nick Kristoff and other talking heads are still stuck on the old stereotypes of Muslim women, the status of women in Muslim societies is rapidly changing, and there is a silent social revolution taking place with rising number of women joining the workforce and moving up the corporate ladder in Pakistan. …



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The PPP-led Sindh government is granting over 212,864 acres of government-owned agriculture land to landless peasants in the province.



Over half of the farm land being given is prime nehri (land irrigated by canals) farm land. About 70 percent of the … Continue

Freakonomics is a series of books by authors Steven D Levitt and Stephen J Dubner who find data points, patterns, correlations and trends that are often missed by mainstream economists and researchers. For example, the authors see how legalization of abortion may have caused significant crime rates decline in the United States in recent decades. They argue with various statistics to reject other possible explanations like gun control, strong economy, three-strikes laws etc. Authors say that the… Continue