In Pakistan, medical education in public sector universities gets subsidies worth billions of rupees. However, a survey by Gallup Pakistan & PRIDE unveiled that 35 per cent of the country’s female medical doctors are unemployed. The survey collected data from 99,900 households & generated district-level representative results.
According to the survey, over 36,000 female doctors are jobless or remain out of the labour force. It added that out of 104,974 female medical graduates, only 68,209 (65 per cent) are working at various private and government hospitals. Around 15,619 (14.9 per cent) female doctors are jobless, and 21,146 (20.1 per cent) are out of the labour force.
A private university charges over Rs. 5 million, whereas a government university takes around Rs. 1 million for medical education. This means that the government has to give a subsidy of at least Rs. 4 million to produce a medical doctor, and taxpayers’ money goes to waste when a female doctor does not opt to serve in the field.
Dr Shahid Naeem, director of policy research at PRIDE, said that one in five female medical graduates choose to remain out of the labour force as most of them get married. She believed that most females want to gain medical education to secure a better spouse.
In a region-wise breakup, there are more unemployed women in urban areas than in rural territories. Around 76 per cent of those medical graduates who opted to remain out of the labour force were married. It is pertinent to mention that in urban areas, the employment opportunities for female graduates are higher (78 per cent).
The female medical doctors included in the survey passed with various degrees of medical including MBBS, BDS, MS/MSc, MPhil or PhD degrees. In terms of age group, the most frequent occurrence of female medical graduates belonged to the age bracket of 25-34 years.