Inequality of opportunity – gender bias in education in Pakistan
Inequality of opportunity – gender bias in education in Pakistan

Summary/Abstract: The subject matter of the paper is inequality of opportunity (IO). Contemporarily, as partof IO, gender bias in education is most likely to be a constraint for growth and development indeveloping countries. The focus is on gender bias in education in Pakistan, which is a widelydiscussed problem thanks to the Nobel Prize laureate Malali Yousufzai. The goal is to present thepremise and potential consequences of unequal access to education for Pakistanis, and to bring thespecifics of the country into clearer focus. The thesis is that gender bias in education in Pakistan isdetermined by various and deeply rooted factors that place equal access to education in the realmof a distant goal, hampering the growth and development of the economy. The research methodsused were a critique of the literature, analysis of statistical data, documents and online sources aswell as elements of case study. Plans concerning education have been sketched in SDG-4 and inthe document “Pakistan 2025”, but despite some improvements, Pakistan is still a country whereone’s future depends on whether one is male or female. A lack of access to education for girls ispart of a broader landscape of gender and spatial inequality. The findings suggest that the maincircumstances for the exclusion of girls from education are culture, poverty and the state. If recommendations for these areas are not implemented, gender bias will remain one of the barriers to thegrowth and development of Pakistan.

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