LAHORE: The Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz believes in equal rights to the women and that Pakistan can be transformed into a modern welfare state if the women play an active role in national affairs, PML-N leader Maryam Nawaz said on Tuesday.
Talking to women party workers, she cited the Punjab government’s decision to increase the reserved quota for women to 15 per cent, disbursement of soft loans, ensuring legal rights of female owners during the division of inheritance, and provision of land to landless people as a joint property of husband and wife.
She said it was a welcome sign that more and more women were becoming part of active workforce. Maryam noted that the women entrepreneurs were facing difficulties in accessing the loan facilities, including micro finance.
She regretted unmarried women were largely denied the microfinance loans by declaring them ‘high-risk borrowers’. She promised that the PML-N would take practical steps to address the issue after coming into power. She said social behaviour restricting women participation in public life needed to be eradicated through state-driven productive interventions at economic, social and political levels.
