Paid Work as Pathway of Empowerment: Pakistan's Lady Health Worker Programme

This chapter explores the contributions that paid work can make to creating pathways of empowerment for women in Pakistan. It draws on the case of Pakistan’s government-run Lady Health Workers Programme (LHWP), which employs almost 100,000 women across Pakistan as community health workers who act as a vital link between communities and primary health care.

This chapter focuses on the experiences of Lady Health Workers (LHWs) and explores the impact of paid work on their lives and communities, and how processes of their empowerment as women are shaped.