PITB launches a project ‘Herself’ to encourage women to embrace freelancing

PITB has triggered a project named ‘Herself’ meant to empower females by enabling them to learn and earn using the driving power of Information Technology. The project aims to achieve its objective through a series of IT based trainings and workshops for women populous of Pakistan which will allow these women to use freelancing, a powerful self-sustaining tool of today.

The launching ceremony was held today at Arfa Technology Park in Lahore. The ceremony was graced by the presence of the Chairman PITB Dr. Umar Saif himself. Among others, notable personnel was Ms. Mussarat Misbah from Depilex Smileagain Foundation, Ms. Seema Aziz of Care Foundation, Ms. Nadia Jamil of The Empty Space, Ms. Sarah Gillani of Tech Hub Connect.

The proposed project, ‘Herself’ will center around getting women more and more productive. The project would be directed at making women skilled enough so that they can earn by the tool of freelancing. While addressing the ceremony on the genre of the project ‘Herself’, Dr. Umar Saif said,

“We envision ‘Herself’ as a platform that will increase the participation of women in leadership roles and the workforce”

The participation of women in the workplace has scientifically been directly related to the economic progress. The women make up for 50% of the population and not including them in the workplace means effectively cutting the economic gains by half. While speaking on the graveness of this issue, Dr. Umar Saif further said,

“All across the globe, greater female participation has gone hand in hand with economic transformations. The more women work, economies grow.”

It was brought to light that Pakistan has been significantly lagging behind other countries when it comes to gender diversity in workplace. Ms. Sarah Gillani, while pointing out the involvement of women in Pakistan workplace, mentioned a bitter reality that out of over 100 startup ideas that have been incubated at Plan9-PITB’s Tech Incubator, only 14% had been women co-founders while out of a total of 500 freelancers housed at Tech Hub Connect only 10 are female.

Ms. Seema, Ms. Misbah, and Ms. Nadia also spoke on the occasion, highlighted the graveness of this issue and stated the applicability of this project.