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The wait is almost over for students eager to check their FBISE Matric Result 2025. With the Federal Board officially announcing the result date, here’s a complete guide on how to check your marks for SSC Part I & II quickly and easily.

Know More: FBISE Matric result for 2025 announced!

According to the latest notification, the FBISE Matric Result 2025 for SSC Part I and II (Class 9 and 10) will be announced on Wednesday, July 16, 2025, at 1:30 PM. These results cover the first annual examinations conducted by the Federal Board of Intermediate and Secondary Education (FBISE) earlier this year.

The official result ceremony will be led by Dr. Khalid Maqbool Siddiqui, Federal Minister for Education and Professional Training, and streamed live on FBISE’s Facebook and YouTube pages for everyone to watch.

Students can check their FBISE Matric Result 2025 through several convenient methods:

• Online: Visit the official website www.fbise.edu.pk and enter your roll number to access your complete result.
• SMS: Send an SMS in the format FB [space] Roll Number to 5050, and receive your result directly on your mobile.
• Direct SMS Notification: If you shared a mobile number during admission, your marks will automatically be sent to you via SMS once the results go live.

For further assistance or questions, students and parents can reach out to the FBISE helpline at 111 032 473.

I met Saima a few years ago while researching the relationship between women’s employment and empowerment in Lyari. At 26, she lived in Agra Taj — a Kutchi-dominated pocket of Lyari where most women worked as domestic help, earning anywhere between Rs5,000 to Rs10,000 a month. Saima, however, stood out. She held a job at Carrefour, one of the multinational department stores in Karachi’s upscale Dolmen Mall, and brought home Rs45,000 a month — more than four times what most women (and even many men) in her neighbourhood earned. Her relative success may be one of the reasons why she was the subject of a great deal of scorn from her neighbours and extended family members.

Saima spoke about how she navigated the city and managed her body in public spaces. One of the greatest perks of her job was the pick-and-drop service, which significantly eased her stress — especially in a context where overcrowded and infrequent buses were a bane for most women in her neighbourhood. This was also important given that her shift ended at 11pm — a time generally considered unacceptable for a young woman to travel alone in the city.

However, the journey from Lyari to Clifton also involved her shifting her habitus as she moved between two distinct social contexts. Saima described the careful calculation of her bodily conduct throughout her commute to maintain an image of respectability, which also ensured that she could keep going to work. In Lyari, Saima wore an abaya [a loose over-garment] over her uniform, but when she arrived in Clifton, she removed it, saying that wearing it there would have made her appear out of place.

Wearing an abaya may have marked her as working class in a context where she was pressured to appear upwardly mobile and modern, and vice versa; not wearing it may have made it seem like she was showing off among her neighbours and relatives, who were already resentful of the fact that she was earning much more than most of them. When Saima returned to her neighbourhood late at night, she avoided the main road, choosing instead to slip through narrow side streets — dodging not just the prying eyes of the men hanging around, but also the loose talk of those quick to judge.

While I am not romanticising the service sector work that Saima was part of — which remains exploitative in many ways — her better-paying job at Carrefour, coupled with its pick-and-drop service, opened doors that were otherwise firmly shut for women from her neighbourhood. It offered her a rare space of relative freedom and a pathway to upward social mobility as compared to most other women in Agra Taj.

While she was spared the daily grind of public transport that burdens most working-class women in Karachi, the real pressure began when she returned home. Her late-evening shifts and a job that involved interacting with ghair mard (unrelated men) and dressing in a more ‘Western’ and ‘modern’ style drew criticism in her neighbourhood, where such work was seen as dishonourable. The tactics Saima adopted, from changing her dress to altering her routes, helped her maintain her respectability as she navigated a variety of spatial contexts.

Without these careful negotiations, she risked social exclusion — either within her own community or at her workplace. Worse still, the mounting pressure on her and her family could have forced her to quit her job altogether. Her ability to travel in the city and to work in a place like Carrefour were, hence, constantly under threat. In fact, at the time of our interview, Saima was engaged to be married, but her fiancé and future in-laws had already made it clear: she would not be allowed to work outside of the home after marriage. For this reason, Saima was trying to delay her wedding for as long as possible.

Saima’s story illustrates just how difficult it is for women, particularly those from the middle and lower socio-economic classes, to engage in ‘decent work’, which, according to the International Labour Organisation (ILO), is work that offers fair wages, safe and healthy working conditions, job security, social protection, and opportunities for career development. Her case study helps us understand some of the reasons why the female labour force participation rate in Pakistan is so low (despite increasing education levels), and why, when women do engage in paid labour, it is most often restricted to low-paid, insecure jobs, largely in the informal sector. Similar trends can be observed across South Asia and, indeed, across the Global South more generally.

Women’s employment in Pakistan: A stagnant trend

At just around 24 per cent, Pakistan has one of the lowest rates of female labour force participation in the world. The country ranks 147 out of the 148 countries included in the World Economic Forum’s 2025 Global Gender Gap Report in terms of economic participation and opportunity. While the rate increased steadily from 1990 (when it was just 11pc) to 2015 (when it reached 24pc), this growth has stagnated over the past decade, with significant dips during the COVID-19 pandemic. Similar trends have been observed across the region.

This is despite the fact that education rates for women and girls have been steadily increasing in the country (and across the region), with women born after 1990 receiving approximately twice as many years of schooling as those born before 1965, and with women comprising slightly more than half (52pc) of those enrolled in higher education in the country.

Clearly, education on its own is not enough to increase female labour force participation. We also know that, out of the 24pc of women who are engaged in paid employment, the vast majority are concentrated at the lowest rungs of the employment ladder, confined to precarious, feminised forms of work in the informal economy, including domestic labour, low-paid teaching jobs, and home-based work. So, what is preventing women from accessing ‘decent work’?

Restrictions on mobility

Saima’s story is a powerful example of how restrictions on mobility remain one of the biggest barriers women face in accessing decent employment. These restrictions come from a variety of sources including their own families, their husbands and in-laws if they are married, their community and neighbours, along with the ever-present fears of sexual harassment when they venture outside.

While practices of purdah vary across communities, there is an overarching belief that a woman’s rightful place is within the home. If she must step outside, she is expected to be ‘properly covered’ and to minimise interaction with unrelated men. These expectations are deeply rooted in notions of honour, or izzat (respect), which — though shaped by local norms — generally link a family or community’s reputation to the control and conduct of women’s bodies. Women like Saima must constantly engage in exhausting calculations to uphold this izzat. Those deemed ‘unrespectable’ risk social censure, which can lead to further restrictions on their mobility — and, in many cases, violence.

Moreover, restrictions on women’s mobility often increase during times of conflict when group boundaries are tightened as a result of insecurity. In conflicts around the world, women’s bodies often become markers of the community’s identity. This is true across religious and ethnic groups (as we have seen so clearly during the genocide in Gaza where Palestinian women’s lingerie was proudly displayed by Israeli soldiers as a marker of their victory), but it is particularly true in South Asia.

Hence, while there are some exceptions to this rule, women’s mobility, and hence their ability to engage in ‘decent work’, tends to decrease during conflict to protect them from being defiled by men of ‘the other’ community. In the same vein, members of marginalised, religious, and ethnic groups often place tighter controls of women’s mobility due to collective insecurity. In general, safety and security often serve as the perfect covers for patriarchy to tighten its control.

Similar patterns can be observed amongst migrant communities, whether these communities have migrated due to conflict or because of environmental and economic pressures. In my research on Muslim women in Delhi, I found that those women who had recently migrated to the city often faced tighter restrictions on their movements by their husbands and in-laws due to heightened insecurities.

A study published in 2019 by the Collective for Social Science Research in Karachi also found that women whose families had recently migrated were less likely to engage in paid employment outside of the home due to moral panics about the ‘bad environment’ of the city including the fear that they would mingle with men from ‘other’ communities.

Even in more settled communities (those whose families had been living in the city for generations), women’s mobility is often restricted to their immediate locality both because of patriarchal community and family restrictions, but also because of a lack of decent public transport, and the need to stay close to home to fulfill domestic responsibilities. For this reason, many of the women in Saima’s neighbourhood worked as part-time domestic workers in nearby localities, as teachers in low-cost private schools where their salaries ranged from Rs 1,500 to Rs3,000 per month, or extremely low-paying home-based work.

The impact of marriage

Another noteworthy part of Saima’s story was related to her marriage. While some studies demonstrate that a woman’s likelihood of engaging in paid employment increases after marriage, in Pakistan, marriage seems to have the opposite effect. Studies conducted over the past two decades show that a woman is 7pc less likely to participate in the paid labour force after marriage.

From my own anecdotal experience, I imagine the number is even higher. While ideas about izzat and honour are certainly part of the explanation, increased domestic responsibilities (particularly after childbirth) as well as the persistence of the ‘male breadwinner model’ along with discriminatory employment practices are also likely part of the explanation.

As we know very well, women carry the vast bulk of unpaid domestic and care work in the world, and this is particularly true in South Asia where the discrepancies in time spent on unpaid work between women and men are amongst the highest. In Pakistan, it is reported that a woman spends 11 hours on unpaid labour for every hour performed by a man. Many women cite domestic responsibilities, particularly after having children, as the main reason for leaving their jobs or not seeking employment outside the home. If they do work outside of the home, it is mostly part-time and in areas close to their residence, which limits the opportunities for accessing a ‘decent job’ if one lives in a low-income locality.

Another important reason for women’s low labour force participation — whether women never seek paid employment or whether they withdraw from work after marriage — is the idea that the man should financially support the family while the women is responsible for domestic/ care work. This idea is still deeply entrenched not only in the minds of men but in the minds of women as well, and in fact, might be getting stronger rather than weaker over time.

A study that tracked attitudinal changes using the World Values Survey found that 70pc of people (women and men) born before 1970 believed that when jobs are scarce, men should have more rights to jobs than women. What is even more worrying is that this number went up to over 80pc amongst those born since the late 1980s indicating an increase in conservative beliefs around gender roles. Many women I interviewed in Lyari also stated that they only worked out of majboori (necessity) because their husbands were unemployed or did not earn enough on their own to care for the family. Considering the kinds of employment women are most likely to be engaged in, the fact that they resented having to work outside the home is not surprising.

Patriarchal attitudes such as notions around izzat or the male breadwinner model are prevalent across genders. However, because men typically hold greater power in society and within households, their views tend to exert a stronger influence on women’s agency than women’s own beliefs do. For instance, studies show that husbands’ attitudes toward women working outside the home have a greater impact on female labour force participation than women’s own attitudes.

Too often, interventions aimed at women’s empowerment and gender equality have focused almost exclusively on women — placing the burden of change disproportionately on their shoulders. But perhaps one reason so many gender-related indicators have stagnated — or even regressed — over the past two decades is that women have already changed as much as they can on their own. For gender equality to be fully realised, including the equal right to decent work, men will have to change too. here is an urgent need to shift focus toward men and masculinities, and to challenge entrenched ideas about gender roles more broadly, if we are to dismantle the structural barriers limiting women’s economic participation.

At the root of women’s low labour force participation and limited access to decent work lie deeply entrenched patriarchal attitudes. They promote the idea that a woman’s primary source of fulfilment is motherhood, encouraging her withdrawal from the workforce after marriage. Such ideas also fuel discriminatory practices in the workplace, where women are seen as less committed or reliable due to their family responsibilities.

Moreover, they contribute to a lack of political will to support women’s employment through essential measures like affordable and safe public transport, accessible childcare, and both maternal and paternal leave — policies that are crucial for enabling women to participate in decent work and for encouraging shared household responsibilities.

This is why attitudinal change must be placed at the heart of the gender equality agenda. It also helps explain why education alone has not been enough to guarantee women’s labour force participation. We must ask: What kind of education are children receiving? Are they being encouraged to question traditional gender roles, or are girls simply being educated to become better wives and mothers? Are boys and men being taught that they, too, must change? Of course, this is easier said than done.

Cultural change is a complicated, slow and difficult process, but it’s also central to removing the barriers to women’s empowerment. Apart from adding gender to school curricula, governments should engage in public education campaigns through the media and community organisations to challenge conservative ideas around gender.

Until and unless women and men’s attitudes towards gender roles, including femininity and masculinity begin to change, women like Saima will continue to face barriers to accessing and maintaining decent forms of employment, that is, if they are allowed to work outside the home at all.