The 9th OIC Ministerial Conference on Women will open in Islamabad under the ambitious theme of socio-economic and political empowerment across the organisation’s 57 member states. Yet the central question is not what new language can be added to an already crowded catalogue of commitments. It is why so much of what the OIC agreed years ago remains unfinished.
The organisation does not suffer from a shortage of blueprints. Its Plan of Action for the Advancement of Women, adopted in 2008 and revised in 2016, already calls for equal access to education, equal pay, childcare, safe transport, workplace protections, financial inclusion, property ownership, gender-responsive budgeting and measurable national action plans. Many of the solutions likely to be proposed in Islamabad are already embedded in OIC policy. The failure has been in converting commitment into consequence.
The scale of that failure is visible in the organisation’s own data. Male labour-force participation across OIC states stood at 75.8 per cent in 2024, while female participation was only 41.2 per cent. Among young women, 37.3 per cent are outside employment, education or training-more than twice the rate for young men. This is not merely a labour-market gap. It reflects a broken transition between schooling, skills and work, weakening household incomes and placing the promise of a demographic dividend further out of reach.
Pakistan’s role as host gives the conference diplomatic weight, but also places its own record under scrutiny. The World Economic Forum ranked the country 148th out of 148 economies in its 2025 gender-gap index. Women’s labour-force participation stands at 22.7 per cent, compared with 68.7 per cent for men. More strikingly, participation falls to only 12.8 per cent among urban women, despite cities offering greater access to education, transport and formal employment.
Employment alone, however, is an inadequate measure of empowerment. Pakistani women in wage employment earn roughly 25 to 30 per cent less than men. Only 11.9 per cent have access to a bank or mobile-money account, compared with 42.3 per cent of men. Expanding women’s presence in poorly paid or insecure work without improving wages, ownership and financial control may raise participation figures without increasing economic power.
The conference must also confront Afghanistan, where 2.2 million girls remain excluded from secondary education. An OIC gathering devoted to empowerment cannot avoid the most sweeping denial of girls’ education in the Muslim world while speaking only in generalities.
Islamabad should therefore seek an accountability compact, not another communiqué dominated by hollow slogans. Member states should adopt common indicators, country-level targets, designated ministries, dedicated budgets and annual public reporting. *