Does women's education play a role in sustainable environment in Pakistan? A quantitative approach

Although Pakistan has taken commendable steps in the course of realization of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), given the disproportionally high rate of women illiteracy, it is important to inquire how educational attainment of women can be focused on the optimal attainment of the environmental sustainability goal. Therefore, the objective of this study is to fill in this gap and analyze the effect of women’s education on environmental sustainability in Pakistan for the period 1995–2021. The Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) method demonstrates that women’s education (WED), education expenditure (EEX), technical innovation (TIN), and renewable energy (RE) all help reduce carbon emissions (CO2e). At the same time, population dynamics and industrialization impact the country’s CO2e. This study also employed granger causality technique and found that women’s education and localized CO2e has bi directional relationship. And one directional relationship exists between CO2e and population growth, CO2e and renewable energy and then CO2e and technological progress. The findings suggest the adoption and implementation of affirmative action programs aimed at improving the women’s STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) education system and policy design. This method may assist in building a large and comprehensive basis concentrating on increasing R&D allocation, especially in the sustainable context.