While Pakistan has legally binding mechanisms to promote gender equality
in employment, labour markets are shaped by the highly gender-segregated
society they are embedded in. Based on the conceptualisation of labour
markets as gendered institutions, I explore how gender generates unequal
access to the labour market for social organisers—a term referring to a type
of development practitioner—in the Hazara region, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa
Province, Pakistan, making it difficult for women to participate in an occupational
field where they are urgently needed to work with village women.
Drawing on a comparison of job announcements and employees’ profiles,
I argue that social norms generate gendered inequalities of access to jobs
as social organisers by regulating access to information, ability to travel,
and eligibility for employment. In this article, I contribute to a better understanding
of the gendered nature of this specific labour market, the impediments
to gender equality in employment, and the need for an improvement
in the work contexts of the female labour force in rural Pakistan in order to
make it possible for women to do the job.