Pakistan’s Hidden Economy Has a Woman’s Name

By Zein Ahmed

I still remember the first time I sat cross-legged on the cool floor of a mud home in rural Sindh, watching a woman stitch a ralli quilt entirely by hand. She was 52-years-old and had been sewing since she was nine, long before anyone had thought to describe her work as “heritage” or “craft” or anything else that sounded decorative. Her fingers moved with the kind of fluency that only decades can teach, pulling bright threads through layers of cotton with a steadiness that felt almost meditative.

There was no spectacle in it, no self-conscious performance for a visitor from the city. There was simply mastery, quiet and complete. When she paused and looked up at me, I assumed, as many people do in such encounters, that the conversation would drift toward need or charity. Instead, she asked me a question that was far more unsettling in its simplicity: where could she sell her work? She did not want sympathy; she wanted access. That question has never left me...

Everyone’s Talking About Jobs...No One’s Talking About Her

Recently, the World Bank reiterated that Pakistan will need to generate roughly 30 million new jobs over the coming decade to keep pace with population growth and avoid deeper economic strain. The urgency of that figure has animated policy conversations across boardrooms, ministries, and conferences. The proposed solutions are almost always the same: expand industrial zones, attract foreign direct investment, build technology parks, reform tax regimes, accelerate large-scale manufacturing. These are important discussions, and they deserve seriousness. What troubles me is not what is being said, but what is consistently left unsaid. In all these conversations about jobs, growth, and national survival, no one mentions the woman on that floor in Sindh. No one mentions the millions of women like her who are already working, already producing, already contributing...yet remain statistically marginal and structurally excluded.

The Invisible Workforce No One Counts

Across Pakistan, an estimated 12 million women are engaged in home-based work, many of them in textile and craft production, according to reports by the International Labour Organization and UN Women Pakistan. They embroider, quilt, weave, dye, block print, and stitch from within their homes, often balancing production with caregiving, agriculture, and household labor. Most are classified as informal workers, which means they lack social protection, formal contracts, and access to finance. Many are not counted adequately in labor force surveys, even though their output moves through markets and supply chains that ultimately generate profit for others. 

Pakistan’s female labor force participation rate remains among the lowest in South Asia, hovering around 21% - 23% according to World Bank data, a statistic that obscures the sheer scale of invisible labor taking place behind closed doors.

Let’s Do the Math They’re Not Doing

If we were to approach this with the same analytical seriousness reserved for industrial policy, the numbers would be difficult to ignore. If 12 million home-based women earned even fifty dollars a month from their craft work, approximately the equivalent of modest supplementary income in rural areas, that would translate into six hundred million dollars circulating monthly through households and local economies, or 7.2 billion dollars annually. This would not be aid, nor concessional loans, nor remittance inflows; it would be earned income tied directly to productivity.

For context, Pakistan’s textile and apparel exports total roughly 16 to 18 billion dollars annually. Even partial formalization and fair compensation within the artisan economy would represent a significant share of national export performance. And this calculation does not yet account for the broader ecosystem of weavers, dyers, thread suppliers, transporters, and small-scale intermediaries who form the extended supply chain around women’s home-based production. When they are included, the number of livelihoods connected to this sector rises to an estimated 15-17 million people.

When Craft Gets Filed Under “Culture” Instead of “Commerce”

Part of the reason this sector remains overlooked lies in classification. Craft in Pakistan is often placed under the umbrella of culture or heritage rather than industry or commerce. While this categorization may seem benign, it carries material consequences. When craft is framed primarily as tradition rather than enterprise, the women who sustain it are denied access to export refinancing facilities, formal SME loans, quality certification programs, and digital market infrastructure. 

Craft Isn’t Nostalgia, It’s Survival

Through my work at Love Handmade, a social enterprise built around rural women artisans, I have witnessed the gap between perception and reality firsthand. The women I meet do not describe themselves as custodians of folklore. They speak in terms of orders, pricing, delivery timelines, and material costs. They understand quality control intuitively, because a misplaced stitch on a white ralli quilt is visible immediately and unforgivingly so. They grasp the value of consistency because repeat orders determine whether school fees can be paid on time.  

When catastrophic floods displaced more than 30 million people in Pakistan in 2022, it was often small but steady craft income that allowed families to rebuild incrementally, buying bricks, repairing roofs, and restoring dignity without waiting indefinitely for external assistance. In these moments, craft is not nostalgia; it is resilience embodied.

The Global Market Is Already Waiting

The global market has already demonstrated an appetite for handmade, ethically produced goods. From high-end fashion houses integrating artisanal techniques into luxury collections to the steady rise of slow fashion and traceable supply chains, consumers worldwide are willing to pay premiums for authenticity and craftsmanship. The demand exists, and the skill unquestionably exists within Pakistan’s rural communities.

What remains missing is structured access: cooperatives that strengthen bargaining power, export-linked clusters that ensure quality standards, artisan-owned brands that capture more value locally, and digital infrastructure that enables direct payment and global reach. None of these interventions require billion-dollar industrial parks; they require recognition that the economy already operating on the floors of rural homes is, in fact, an economy.

This Isn’t a Job Crisis...It’s an Attention Crisis

Pakistan undoubtedly faces a formidable employment challenge, and large-scale industrial growth will remain part of the solution. However, to frame the issue solely as a problem of future job creation is to overlook the millions of livelihoods already in motion. The search for 30 million jobs does not need to begin from zero; it can begin by recognizing, formalizing, and strengthening the work already being done. The country does not lack skill, productivity, or entrepreneurial instinct. What it lacks is attention directed toward those whose labor has been normalized to the point of invisibility.

When I think back to that afternoon in Sindh, I do not remember poverty as much as I remember capability. I remember the steadiness of her hands and the clarity of her question. She was never asking to be saved; she was asking to participate. If Pakistan is serious about inclusive growth, export expansion, and dignified employment for women, then the answer may not lie solely in the next industrial zone or technology park. It may lie in the recognition that millions of women have already built an industry from their homes and that all they require now is what any business requires: fair access to markets, finance, and opportunity.