'Pakistan is good at launching women’s businesses. It’s bad at sustaining them'

Business Recorder reported that Pakistan is far more active in supporting women at the launch stage of a business, through awards, loan schemes and launch events. The article argues that much less attention goes to whether those ventures survive, become profitable, or are still run by the same women years later. The piece questions how success is currently measured in the country's entrepreneurship debate.

Tech entrepreneur Mahe Zehra Husain, author of Women Rising, told the paper the question should shift from how many women started businesses to how many built ones that worked for them. The Kashf Women Entrepreneurship Award has eight categories, none of which asks whether a business survived, turned a profit or is still operating. Government figures measure the same thing, with more than 104,000 young women receiving Rs29 billion under the Prime Minister's Youth Business and Agriculture Loan Scheme, according to a parliamentary reply.

Husain stressed that sustainability depends on financial literacy, pricing, cash flow management and access to financing, legal help, mentoring, childcare or policy change, and that a workbook cannot by itself solve structural inequality. The article concludes that tracking how many of these businesses are still standing and profitable five or ten years on is the missing measure. Without that data, it suggests, celebrating launches will continue to run ahead of proof of what follows.