The Pink Tax: The Price Pakistani Women Pay Under Patriarchy

So women do what the city has taught them to do. They go to a cafe, with a guard at the door, walls around the seating and a table nobody can crowd. It is safer. It is also close to Rs 1,000 for a coffee. The drink is not what is different. The price is for the walls.

The Public Space Tax: Who Gets to Enjoy the City?

Public space is supposed to belong to everyone. In practice, ask yourself how many women you know who would sit alone in a park, wait at a bus stop at dusk, eat at a roadside restaurant or walk around their own neighbourhood after dark without running a quick calculation first. Surveys by UN Women and the Aurat Foundation, cited by Arab News, suggest that up to 90% of women face some form of harassment during their commutes.

When the free spaces feel off-limits, the paid ones become the default. A walk, a meal or a conversation with friends turns into a line in the budget.

The Time Tax: Getting Home Is a Whole Project

Money is only half of it. Women also pay in time. A Karachi reader writing to The Nation called it a “time tax”: waiting for rides, verifying drivers, sharing live locations with trusted contacts. Add planning routes around poorly lit or isolated streets and arranging your whole schedule around when it is safe to be out. That is not a to-do list. It is an unpaid second job, and the hours it eats are hours that could have gone to work, study or just enjoying life.

The bill keeps climbing, too. The same reader wrote that cab fares had risen by 100% after the fuel price spike, while cheaper options like motorbikes and public transport are rarely a real choice for women when safety is at stake. The government’s SMTA Pink Scooty Scheme puts vehicles in women’s hands, but a scooter is not the same as a safe road.

Even the fixes come with a price. Women-only ride apps like VSisters, launched in June 2025 with female drivers and female passengers, exist because women had long complained of harassment on mainstream apps. They are welcome, and they have been tried before, as with the women-only taxis launched in 2018. But a country that needs a separate app to get women home safely has already told you something about the main road.

Paying More While Earning Less

The bill lands on the people least able to pay it. In the World Economic Forum’s 2026 Global Gender Gap Report, Pakistan ranks 143rd of 145 countries overall and 144th for economic participation and opportunity. Fewer than one in four Pakistani women is in the labour force, at 24.4% in the 2024-25 Labour Force Survey.

So women are asked to pay extra for the same coffee, the same commute and the same evening out, while earning less, or nothing at all.

The Bottom Line: Patriarchy Has a Price Tag

The pink tax is not always a pricier razor with a different label. Sometimes it is a Rs 1,000 coffee where a man pays Rs 50. Sometimes it is a private ride because the bus is not safe. Sometimes it is the hours spent planning a journey that should have been simple.

Women are not asking for luxury. They are asking to use public transport, sit in a public place and move around their own cities without paying a surcharge for safety. Patriarchy isn’t free. Pakistani women pay for it every day.

Sources

The Public Space Tax: Who Gets to Enjoy the City?

When the free spaces feel off-limits, the paid ones become the default. A walk, a meal or a conversation with friends turns into a line in the budget.

The Time Tax: Getting Home Is a Whole Project

Paying More While Earning Less

So women are asked to pay extra for the same coffee, the same commute and the same evening out, while earning less, or nothing at all.

The Bottom Line: Patriarchy Has a Price Tag

Sources

Picture an afternoon outside with friends. For a man in Pakistan it can be this simple: a roadside dhaba, a plastic stool, Rs 50 for chai, and nobody asking what he is doing there. For a woman, the same plan comes with a catch. A dhaba table can mean stares, comments and the constant feeling of being watched, especially when you are alone or with other women.

The Public Space Tax: Who Gets to Enjoy the City?

When the free spaces feel off-limits, the paid ones become the default. A walk, a meal or a conversation with friends turns into a line in the budget.