Every year, International Women’s Day reminds us to celebrate women’s achievements while reflecting on the challenges that still exist. In Pakistan, women play a vital role in shaping families, homes, and communities. This year, House Building Finance Company Limited (HBFC) is using the occasion to launch a campaign that rethinks the meaning of a phrase many of us have grown up hearing: “aurat ghar banane wali hoti hai.”
The phrase has long been used to describe a woman’s role in caring for and managing a household. While it recognizes her contribution, it has also quietly limited her identity to the domestic space. In reality, women are not only the ones who nurture homes. They also have the potential to build and own them.
Yet the numbers show a different reality. Only a small percentage of women in Pakistan own property, with estimates suggesting around 3 percent of homes are owned by women. The gap highlights a larger issue around financial inclusion and asset ownership, despite the central role women play in sustaining families and households.
Through this campaign, HBFC hopes to encourage a shift in mindset. Owning a home can represent much more than a financial milestone for women. It offers security, independence, and the confidence to plan a future on their own terms. Programs like GHAR FOR HER aim to create pathways that make this dream more achievable.
This Women’s Day, the campaign invites society to rethink what it truly means to be a “ghar banane wali.” It is not just someone who maintains a home. It can also be a woman who builds her own future and claims a space of her own within it.
