October 18th, 2021
By Rehan Piracha
LAHORE
Only 29 percent of women in the country have expressed feeling safe when going outside their homes, according to a survey by a social and marketing research firm.
Asked how secure they felt while going outside their homes, over two-thirds of the women respondents in the survey expressed that they felt unsure of their safety while commuting in the society. “However, 35% females believe that they are ‘Somewhat Safe’ and similar 35% female population believes that they are absolutely ‘Unsafe ‘ when they commute in the society,” said the findings of Quarterly Performance Evaluation Survey (QPES), carried out by the PULSE Consultant social and marketing firm.
The highest percentage of uncertainty regarding women feeling insecure outside their homes came from Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, followed by Punjab.
Speaking to Voicepk.net, Kashif Hafeez, chief executive of PULSE, said that almost half (51 %) of the female respondents from the Upper Income Class and one-third (38 %%) of women respondents from Low Income Class have expressed their concern on safety when commuting outside their homes.
Interestingly, Kashif Hafeez, said male respondents in the survey had a slightly starker view of women safety in the country, adding that the males considered women less safe outside their homes as compared to female respondents’ view of their safety.
“Only 22% of male respondents said that women from their families feel absolutely safe when going out of their homes in comparison to 29% of female respondents saying feeling very safe outside,” he told Voicepk.net.
Hafeez said the questions on women safety were incorporated in the quarterly survey as part of ad hoc questions on various social issues, adding that the issue of women safety had gained national attention in the recent months.
According to the survey, majority of the males (45%) believes that their family female members are ‘Somewhat Safe’ and 30% of them believe that their family females’ members are ‘Absolutely Unsafe’ outside their homes.
Highest perception of males on insecurity towards women was reported from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (45%) followed by Punjab (30%).
The findings of the survey point out that male respondents from the Upper Income Class reported a quite lower perception of insecurity in comparison to females in their class.
Male respondents from the Upper Income Class reported a higher percentage of The perception of women feeling insecure while going outside their homes “Contrary to females belonging to Upper Class (where 51% believe that they are Absolutely Unsafe), only one-fourth (25%) of the males from the Upper Class have opinion that their female family members are Absolutely Unsafe,” the survey said.
Hafeez said the survey found that only 20% of Pakistanis feel that women are safe in overall perception of women safety in Pakistan.
He said the rest of the population had expressed doubt on women safety ranging from somewhat safe to absolutely unsafe.
“Nearly half (43%) of respondents believe that women are Somewhat Safe which means that they believe neither Pakistani women are Unsafe nor they believe Pakistani women are Safe,” Hafeez said. Only 35 % of Pakistanis believe that Pakistani women are absolutely not safe in Pakistan, he added.
Likewise, the highest perception of “Absolutely Unsafe” from respondents was reported from Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (46%), followed by Punjab (35%). Also, 19% of respondents in KPK, 21% in Punjab, 24% in Sindh and 7% in Balochistan believed women are “very safe” in the country.
The highest feeling (45%) of “Absolutely Unsafe” was reported by respondents from Low Income Class. Respondents from Upper Middle Class and Middle Class (57% and 55%) expressed doubts over safety of women.
According to Hafeez, findings of the survey are based on 1,809 respondents’ opinions, which were interviewed on October 4, 2021. The survey was conducted through CATI (Computer assisted telephonic interviews) a state-of-the-art technology where all calls are recorded.
QPES is Pulse consultant’s indigenous tracking tool – where since November 2018, the public perceptions and opinions about government’s performance and current political situation are collected on a quarterly basis through unbiased, well structured, non-leading questions and instrument.
He said that the study adopted a very delicate stratified sampling process, where along with rural areas over 60 cities were covered from all provinces and cultural diversity of Pakistan. Results of the study are reweighted on actual population of provincial urban and rural basis, he added.
