ISLAMABAD: Shazma Hussain had a degree in interior designing and architecture. What the stay-at-home mother of two little girls didn’t have was the time to put her training to use through full-time work.

So, Hussain decided to transform her home into her workplace and went online to sell her range of colorful table runners, bed sheets, pillow covers and customized embroidered dresses. For the last year and half, she has been selling handmade home decor items on multiple online platforms like Daraz, and about four months ago, she started collaborating with WeCamp, a platform launched in 2021 to recognize, support and celebrate home-based women entrepreneurs.

But despite the ambition and the support, business is not easy for women like Hussain, living the traditional Pakistani roles of mother, wife and home-maker.

“My main reason to start the work was that with two little girls, I couldn’t give full time to a job,” Hussain told Arab News at her home work station in Islamabad. “As a mother, time management was a big challenge.”

“I live in a joint family. That’s why I was a bit worried that my children and family wouldn’t get disturbed [by my work].”

Managing family life and a home-based business wasn’t the only challenge. An even bigger concern was mastering the mechanics of online marketing.

Indeed, in Pakistan where women entrepreneurs mostly work in traditional household craft industries, and depend on social ties and informal networks involving their extended family, friends and neighbors, graduating to a digital business platform means overcoming the problems of digital literacy and lack of access to technology and online marketing skills.

According to the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Index 2022, Pakistan is the second worst country in terms of gender parity, placed 145 out of 146 countries. Deep-rooted patriarchal norms and limited economic opportunities for women are some of the significant factors that keep women from realizing their potential.

Compared to men, women’s participation and employment is negligible — only 1 percent, as opposed to the 21 percent for men, with many women working in the informal sector, often doing unpaid jobs as unskilled labor. Only half of the female population is literate, compared to 72.5 percent of the male population. And the female labor force is mostly unskilled and untrained to perform technical jobs.

For Khadeeja Syed, a home-based entrepreneur who paints characters, flowers and various customised designs on shoes, she had to find support for her work not only at home but also in the physical market.

“For example, I would go to a shop to buy beads. I asked them [shopkeepers] that I needed a certain kind of beads, that I had to use them on shoes, but they said this is the job of an artisan. You can’t do it. You won’t be able to do this,” Syed said. “I wasn’t welcome in the market.”

But Syed has beaten the odds to pursue her business idea and has also been selling her hand painted shoes online for the last seven months. Like Hussain, she also enrolled with WeCamp four months ago.

“Advertising online was my biggest worry because when it comes to online marketing, businesses often fail to establish trust with customers,” Hussain, who had no previous expertise in digital marketing, said.

But learning new skills has given her strength:

“Socially, you become confident by interacting with different people, by advertising your goods to them. Then socially also the confidence comes.”

“It is convenient for me to sell my products through digital and ecommerce platforms, but it will definitely take time to build my brand,” Syed added. “The real challenge on the digital platforms is to be consistent, maintain the quality of your products and build trust with your customers.”

WeCamp is trying to help overcome these challenges, said Simran Basit, a marketing associate at the platform which has, since November last year, trained over a hundred women entrepreneurs through workshops in effective digital marketing.

“We are helping home-based women entrepreneurs to stand up for themselves, to gain financial independence and start their own businesses,” she said “We also want to help them make their mark in a male-dominated society by realizing their potential.”

Meanwhile, Syed has a message for women like herself, struggling to find a niche in the digital marketplace:

“To all those women who are afraid of taking a simple step … I see a lot of talented ladies who are at home, wasting their talent. I’ll advise them that even while sitting at home, you can start your business very well. Join different platforms and get proper guidance for your financial independence and grooming.”

Husain had a similar message:

“Work hard to pursue your passion and dreams … You may face difficulties, but once you are out to do your work, god willing, you will improve and be able to achieve something.”