The Critical Review of Social Sciences Studies
"The Critical Review of Social Sciences Studies" is a scholarly journal dedicated to fostering critical analysis and discussion within the realm of social sciences. Established with the mission to facilitate a deeper understanding of societal phenomena, the journal provides a platform for researchers, scholars, and practitioners to examine, evaluate, and critique various aspects of social sciences studies. By encouraging rigorous scrutiny and thoughtful reflection, it aims to contribute to the advancement of knowledge and the improvement of social policies and practices.
UV Absorbance-Based Evaluation of Natural Oils for SPF Enhancement in Skin-Friendly Sunscreen Formulations
UV radiation still plays a big role in early skin aging, sunburn, and skin cancer. People use conventional sunscreens all the time, but they depend on artificial UV filters, which can raise safety concerns, including allergic reactions, hormone disruption, cancer risks, and stability problems when exposed to sunlight. Because of this, more people are turning to natural, plant-based alternatives that may provide safer, cheaper, and more eco-friendly support for sun protection. Photoprotection is therefore receiving increasing attention. In this study, we focused on testing how well different herbal oils, including coconut, sweet almond, wheat germ, carrot seed, tea tree, and raspberry seed oil, can absorb UV rays. We used a spectrophotometric method to measure an in vitro Sun Protection Factor (SPF). These oils contain flavonoids, phenolic compounds, and essential fatty acids and are known for antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, emollient, and skin-conditioning effects. Their oily nature can also improve adherence and film formation on the skin. Natural oils offer advantages such as availability and renewability, while challenges remain in formulation stability, ingredient standardization, and real-world performance. This study provides a basis for developing skin-friendly sunscreen formulations from locally available natural oils for potential use in Pakistan's skincare and cosmetic industries.
Herbal oils, herbal sunscreen, spectrophotometric method, UV protection factor, photostability, antioxidant activity, flavonoids, phenolic compounds, skin care.
Copyright (c) 2026 The Critical Review of Social Sciences Studies https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Challenging Patriarchy: Women’s Everyday Resistance and Agency in Larkana, Sindh, Pakistan
Women in Pakistan have historically faced systemic oppression and marginalization within patriarchal structures, yet their everyday acts of resistance have remained underexplored in academic discourse. This study investigates women’s resistance in Larkana, Sindh, through a feminist qualitative framework using in-depth interviews and content analysis. Drawing on Spivak’s subaltern theory and feminist perspectives, the article explores how women negotiate agency within households, resist cultural and political marginalization, and challenge structural inequalities in education, health, mobility, and politics. The findings reveal that despite systemic barriers, women resist oppression through individual and collective actions, ranging from defiance in marital decisions to participation in feminist movements and online activism. This resistance not only challenges patriarchal norms but also redefines women’s roles in society. The article contributes to feminist literature on everyday resistance in Pakistan by foregrounding women’s voices from the periphery, particularly in Larkana. It concludes that acknowledging and documenting these resistances is crucial for strengthening gender justice and policy reforms in Pakistan.
Women’s resistance, Feminism, Larkana, Patriarchy, Agency, Pakistan, Subaltern theory
Copyright (c) 2025 The Critical Review of Social Sciences Studies https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Cognitive Flexibility and Self-Beliefs: The Mediating Role of Personality Traits among University Students
Cognitive flexibility is an essential psychological ability that enables individuals to adapt their thinking and behavior in response to changing academic and social demands. It plays a significant role in developing positive self-beliefs, including self-esteem and self-efficacy. The present study examined the mediating role of personality traits in the relationship between cognitive flexibility and self-beliefs among university students. A quantitative cross-sectional correlational research design was employed. Data were collected from 300 university students at the University of Sargodha using stratified random sampling. Standardized instruments, including the Cognitive Flexibility Scale, Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale, General Self-Efficacy Scale, and Big Five Personality Traits Scale, were used for data collection. Data were analyzed using SPSS Version 27 through descriptive statistics, Pearson Product-Moment correlation, and Hayes' PROCESS Macro (Model 4). The findings revealed that cognitive flexibility was positively associated with self-esteem, self-efficacy, and adaptive personality traits. Moreover, personality traits significantly mediated the relationship between cognitive flexibility and self-beliefs, indicating that students with greater cognitive flexibility were more likely to develop adaptive personality characteristics that enhanced their self-esteem and self-efficacy. The study concludes that fostering cognitive flexibility and positive personality development may strengthen students' self-beliefs and support their academic success and psychological well-being.
Cognitive Flexibility, Self-Beliefs, Self-Esteem, Self-Efficacy, Personality Traits, University Students.
Open Banking, Information Asymmetry, and Credit Market Efficiency: Evidence from Emerging and Developing Economies
Information asymmetry remains a core barrier to efficient credit markets in emerging and developing economies. Open banking a regulatory framework that allows consumers to share their financial data with third-party providers presents a new mechanism to address this barrier. The aim of this study is to assess the impact of open banking on credit market efficiency and financial inclusion in 28 emerging and developing economies (EMDEs) between 2011 and 2022. The study examines the correlation between the credit market efficiency index and adoption of open banking using a System Generalized Method of Moments (System-GMM) estimator, which is appropriate to deal with endogeneity and dynamic panel bias. The study applies a System Generalized Method of Moments (System-GMM) estimator to account for endogeneity and dynamic panel bias, and examines the correlation between the credit market efficiency index and open banking adoption. The impact is greater in high-quality digital infrastructure and regulatory quality economies. The total effect of open banking on household credit access is accounted for by about 38% of the mediation of fintech penetration. The impact is greater in lower-middle income economies, as revealed by the heterogeneity analysis. The results are consistent across Two-Stage Least Squares (2SLS), Propensity Score Matching (PSM) and Fixed Effects (FE) models. The findings carry direct policy implications for regulators seeking to implement open finance frameworks in line with G20 Digital Financial Inclusion principles and the UN Sustainable Development Goal 8.10.
Open banking; information asymmetry; credit market efficiency; financial inclusion; fintech; emerging economies; System-GMM
Honeyshadow: An AI-Adaptive Honeypot Network Using Reinforcement Learning for Dynamic Attacker Profiling and Threat Intelligence Extraction
Traditional honeypot systems rely on static configurations that fail to keep pace with the evolving sophistication of modern attackers, leading to short engagement windows and limited threat intelligence capture. Once a skilled adversary recognises the repetitive, unchanging fingerprint of a decoy service, the session is typically abandoned within minutes, and whatever intelligence value the honeypot might have offered is lost along with it. This paper presents HoneyShadow, an adaptive honeypot framework that employs both tabular Q-Learning and a Deep Q-Network (DQN) to dynamically morph its simulated environment in real time based on observed attacker behavior. The system deploys isolated, Docker-based decoy services across SSH, HTTP, FTP, and SMB protocols, maps captured commands to MITRE ATT&CK technique identifiers, and shares structured intelligence via STIX 2.1 and TAXII 2.1. A five-dimensional, three-model anomaly detection ensemble (DBSCAN, Isolation Forest, and One-Class SVM) identifies zero-day exploitation patterns through majority vote, reducing the false-positive instability that plagues any single unsupervised detector used in isolation. We validate the reinforcement learning policy at scale using a 200-trial-per-condition simulation, and separately validate real-world pipeline functionality through a live-attack pilot study using authentic penetration testing tools against live Docker decoys. Results show that both RL agents learn a substantially more decisive escalation policy than a static baseline, with the DQN agent selecting the highest-value deception action 45.7% of the time compared to 12.1% for tabular Q-learning and 0% for the static baseline. A live-attack pilot further confirms that the end-to-end pipeline functions correctly against real attack tooling for SSH, HTTP, and Nmap reconnaissance traffic. We report these findings candidly, including current limitations in FTP/SMB live event capture and the need for larger-scale live validation, positioning this work as an honest foundation for adaptive deception research rather than an overstated claim of efficiency.
Adaptive Honeypot; Reinforcement Learning; Q-learning; Deep Q-network; MITRE ATT&CK; Docker; DBSCAN
Unleashing Transmission Channel from Energy access to Quality of Life; How can the Female Labor Force mediate the link in E-20 economies?
Energy access continues to be a serious hindrance to improving quality of life and socio-economic development in emerging nations. While there is existing research that deals with the association between Energy access and quality of life and female labor force participation and socio-economic development independently, little research has been done regarding the mediation effect of female labor force participation in the connection between Energy access and quality of life. The study investigates how the energy-access dimension of Energy access is associated with the Quality of Life Index (QLI) based on three indicators of female labor force participation – presence of women in national parliament, Women’s Business and the Law index, and female labor force participation rate among the E-20 economies, which include twenty major emerging economies. Balanced panel data from 2000 to 2023 will be used in order to estimate direct, indirect, and total effects between the variables using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). As far as Energy access is concerned, the lack of internationally comparable multidimensional Energy access data means that Energy access is proxies by access to electricity among both the overall and the rural population. Based on the results, increased energy access is found to improve the Quality of Life Index. In addition, while women's presence in the national parliament is found to mediate the effect of energy access on the quality of life, the Women’s Business and the Law index and women’s labor force participation negatively mediate such an effect. As a result, it is necessary not only to improve the quality of life through better energy access but also to promote the quality of work performed by women and gender-sensitive institutions.
Energy access; Quality of Life; female labor force
Effectiveness of the Probation System in Reducing Recidivism: A Case Study of Faisalabad, Pakistan
The probation system is an important component of community-based corrections that aims to rehabilitate offenders while allowing them to remain within their families and communities. Effective probation supervision may contribute to behavioral change, social reintegration, and the reduction of repeated offending. This study examines the effectiveness of the probation system in reducing recidivism in Faisalabad, Pakistan. The study focuses on the experiences of probationers and explores the role of probation officers, counselling, rehabilitation opportunities, family support, vocational training, social stigma, peer influence, and community reintegration. A qualitative research approach was adopted, and data were collected through interviews with 20 probationers. Thematic analysis was used to identify major patterns and themes emerging from the participants' experiences. The findings indicate that effective supervision, counselling, family support, rehabilitation opportunities, and positive social relationships can facilitate successful reintegration. However, limited employment opportunities, social stigma, financial difficulties, negative peer influence, and weaknesses in rehabilitation services may create barriers to reintegration and increase the risk of reoffending. The study concludes that probation can play a significant role in reducing recidivism when supervision is combined with meaningful rehabilitation and social support. Strengthening probation services, improving vocational opportunities, and developing community-based reintegration programmes are recommended.
Probation, recidivism, rehabilitation, reintegration, probationers, probation officers, Faisalabad, Pakistan
Examining Public Administration in Pakistan’s Democratic System: Issues and Challenges (2013–2023)
This study purposes to examine the issues and challenges in Pakistan Institutional System (2013-2023). Due to its incapacity to preserve an equilibrium of authority among its economic, political, and religious dynamics, Pakistan has encountered many difficulties since its founding. In order to provide lessons for Pakistani governments, this study employs an institutional framework to examine the bureaucratic environment in the evolving mechanisms of public service delivery. This study is conducted by using qualitative method through secondary sources of data collection techniques. It warns that a strong civil society, institutionalized morals, and a legitimate democratic government are necessary for bureaucratic reforms to succeed. The bureaucracy's ability to function has been paralyzed by the incoherence and inefficiency of decentralization, and the system has been weakened and the inefficiency of public institutions has increased due to the short-term, ill-planned, politically motivated actions of weak governments. By proposing a suitable framework to address these issues, it is imperative to focus on continuity and evolution in democratic governance and public policymaking.
Public Administration, Democracy, Governance, Pakistan, Public Policy, Citizen Service
The Evidentiary Crisis of the Digital Age: AI-Generated Deepfakes and the Fragility of Judicial Truth-Finding
The emergence of AI-generated deepfakes represents a fundamental disruption to the evidentiary foundations of modern criminal justice systems. This article examines how synthetic media technologies capable of producing hyper-realistic audio and video content indistinguishable from authentic recordings undermine long-standing assumptions about the reliability of audiovisual evidence. Drawing on criminological theory, comparative legal analysis, and empirical case studies, the article argues that deepfakes precipitate an evidentiary crisis that transcends traditional concerns about evidence tampering. Unlike conventional forms of manipulation that leave detectable traces, deepfakes can be generated as entirely synthetic artifacts with no corresponding real-world event, collapsing the evidentiary framework built on the premise that falsification occurs subsequent to an authentic original. The article analyzes the "liar's dividend" phenomenon, whereby the mere existence of deepfake technology enables plausible denial of authentic evidence, and examines how this dynamic complicates investigations, prosecutions, and judicial decision-making. It further considers the disproportionate impact on developing jurisdictions with limited forensic capacity, using Pakistan as a case study to illustrate the institutional and doctrinal vulnerabilities that exacerbate the evidentiary challenges posed by synthetic media. The article concludes by advocating for heightened authentication standards, specialized judicial training, and the development of forensic protocols capable of restoring confidence in digital evidence without compromising due process protections.
Deepfakes, Evidentiary Authentication, Digital Forensics, Criminal Justice, Synthetic media, Liar's dividend, Evidence law
Copyright (c) 2026 The Critical Review of Social Sciences Studies https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Representation of Students in Punjab Government Education Policy Documents: A Corpus-Based Transitivity Analysis
The present study initially analyze the transitivity process types occur most frequently in the selected Punjab education policy documents, furthermore, it analyzes the ways of these process-type frequencies contribute to the representation of students within the policy discourse and lastly, it analyzes the that what educational priorities and meanings are reflected through the transitivity choices used in the policy documents. The research design used in this study was quantitative corpus-based research based on the systemic functional linguistics (SFL) approach. A corpus was used to identify and measure the frequency of transitivity process types (quantitative approach). The data was taken from the Punjab Education Sector Plan (PESP) 2019/20 –2023/24 provided by the Government of the Punjab. The texts were chosen using a purposive sampling and the corpus was imported into the UAM Corpus Tool for annotation and analysis. The results indicate that material processes are the most common type of process in the corpus, followed by relational. These two represent over 80% of all coded clauses. Less is seen with mental, verbal, behavioral and existential processes. The emphasis in this pattern is largely on action, implementation and system objectives as targets of the policy discourse. The results showed that educational policy is mainly conveyed in terms of action, institutional responsibility, and educational development.
Punjab Government, Education Policy, Documentation. Corpus-Based Transitivity Analysis
A Story of US vs THEM in Benjamin Netanyahu’s Address to Congress in 2024
Adopting Van Dijk’s Ideological Square and Halliday’s Systemic Functional Grammar this study conducts a critical discourse analysis of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to the US Congress on July 25, 2024. It tries to uncover the discursive construction of the Self (Israel, US, allies) and Other (Hamas, Iran, proxies) during the Gaza War. Five key themes— victimhood, self-power and defense, global threat of the Other, alliance and unity, and glorification of the Self—that frame Israel as a morally superior defender of civilization against a barbaric, existential threat are identified. Through transitivity structures, material processes position the Self as a proactive agent and the Other as a violent aggressor, while relational processes assign positive qualities to the Self and negative traits to the Other. Discursive strategies, including hyperbole, parallelism, and selective evidence, align with van Dijk’s model by emphasizing the group polarization of the Us versus Them dichotomy. Netanyahu’s speech reinforces a polarized narrative to justify Israel’s military actions and rally US support. This study highlights how political discourse manipulates linguistic and ideological tools to shape power dynamics and public perception in times of conflict.
Critical Discourse Analysis; Ideological Square; Transitivity; Gaza War; Self/Other Representation.
Empowering Educators for Climate Literacy: Teaching Strategies for Climate Change Education in the Pursuit of Cleaner Production
Climate Change Education (CCE) has emerged as a vital mechanism to address environmental degradation and promote sustainable development. This study explores effective teaching strategies for empowering educators to deliver impactful climate education, thereby supporting transitions toward cleaner production. A quantitative research design, supported by descriptive statistics and inferential analysis, was employed to evaluate perceptions, practices, and challenges of educators in integrating CCE into curricula. Findings reveal strong support for scientific literacy and inquiry-based approaches, yet significant gaps persist in resources, interdisciplinary integration, and affective domain teaching. The study proposes actionable recommendations for teacher training, resource development, and institutional policy reforms to enhance climate literacy and promote sustainable behavior among learners. This research contributes to the growing discourse on education’s role in enabling systemic environmental change.
Climate Change Education, Teacher Empowerment, Cleaner Production, Pedagogical Strategies, Sustainable Development, Environmental Literacy
The Effect of Screen Time on Children's Cognitive, Emotional, Social and Physical Development: A systematic review
Excessive screen time use has become a major concern in the early stages of development among children. This review writing emphasizes on different realm of children’s development, such as physical and non-physical development over the period of five years (2019-2025). Deep analysis indicates high level of screen time especially passive viewing of non-educational content is linked to delay in language acquisition, executive function including attention, and academic skills, as well as increased behavioral problems and poorer social skills due to little to no interaction with humans while supervised viewing within recommended watch time improve short term memory and pose less negative impact. Also, Physical health correlates of heavy screen use include sedentary behavior contributing to higher obesity risk and sleep disruption, among other issues. In essence, the developmental consequences of screen time are complex and moderated by factors like content type, context of use (e.g. caregiver engagement), the child’s age and disposition, and family socioeconomic status thus the findings suggest that screen exposure should be conceptualized according to content, interaction patterns, and developmental stage rather than duration alone. The gap in the literature suggests more longitudinal research with higher sample size to establish causal relationship and reset recommendation hours of screen use. To sum up, the current findings support limiting screen use for children under 5 and highly scrutinize content and use of screen above age 5 by caregiver to benefit in this digital age.
Physical Development, Screen Time, Cognitive Development
Green Marketing and Consumer Buying Behavior: Mediating Role of Environmental Concern
Sustainability has become a primary concern of marketing in recent years, as environmental degradation and changing values of consumers have brought it to the forefront of marketing practice. However, the influence of green marketing on consumer buying remains unclear, especially in emerging economies. In this study, the influence of green marketing on consumer buying behavior is examined in the context of whether environmental concern explains the relationship between green marketing and buying behavior among consumers in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Pakistan. The data were collected by using convenience sampling of 229 consumers who purchased an environmentally friendly product during the last one year by using a structured questionnaire, based on the theory of planned behavior and value-belief-norm theory. Structural relationships were tested using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) and bootstrapping (5,000 resamples) was used to test mediation. All the measurement model criteria were fulfilled, such as composite reliability, average variance extracted, and the Heterotrait-Monotrait ratio (HTMT), which was exceeded for two of the three constructed pairs and was just above the conservative level for the third pair. Findings revealed that Green marketing had a significant positive effect on environmental concern, and the environmental concern was in turn significant in predicting the buying behavior. Environmental concern partially mediated the link between green marketing and buying behavior. Collectively, the model accounted for 66.8% of the variance in buying behavior. The results expand TPB and VBN theory to an under-researched market, and provide actionable guidance for marketers, retailers and policy makers in their sustainability communication design.
Consumer Buying Behavior, Green Marketing, Sustainable Consumption, Theory of Planned Behavior, Value-Belief-Norm Theory
Nuclear and Missile Systems: Impacts on Strategic Stability of Northeast Asia
The region of Northeast Asia has become one of the most strategically sensitive regions due to the ongoing development of nuclear weapons, ballistic and cruise missiles, missile defense systems, and emerging hypersonic technologies. The competition between the US, China, and Russia in the nuclear arms race is combined with the security issues of North Korea, South Korea, and Japan, which creates a complicated security situation in the region. This paper discusses how nuclear and missile capabilities affect the strategic stability in the region of Northeast Asia. It concentrates on the strategic interests of big countries, transformation of military capacities, and reactions of regional countries to these transformations. The research reveals that the development of nuclear and missile capabilities contributes to the reinforcement of deterrence through the improvement of its survivability. Rapid advancements in technology may destabilise because they limit decision-making time and create uncertainties as regards the intentions of the militaries and more armament production. North Korean nuclear and missile development efforts have significantly raised concerns regarding security among South Korea and Japan, making them work more closely with the US for better defence. Meanwhile, China’s military modernisation has created more competition with the US. The author posits that strategic stability in Northeast Asia relies on not just weaponry numbers but also perceptions, alliances, technology, and absence of regional arms control mechanisms.
Northeast Asia, nuclear weapons, missile systems, strategic stability, deterrence, security dilemma, arms competition
Survival and Resilience in A Post-Apocalyptic Fiction: An Eco critical Reading Atwood's Oryx and Crake and McCarthy’s The Road
This research comparatively analyzes ecological collapse and survival in Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake (2003) and Cormac McCarthy's The Road (2006) and modern-day climate fiction. It addresses a major gap in ecocritical scholarship concerning systematic and comparative studies of these novels using a single theoretical framework. It uses qualitative methods and interpretive research relying on close reading and thematic analysis. It adopts Garrard's (2004) trope-based ecocriticism to analyze the environmental narratives of the two novels with regard to the apocalyptic, the wilderness, the pastoral, and pollution. This research argues that despite the disparate narrative strategies, both novels situate ecological collapse as a result of the ideological, technical, and institutional failures and endangerments of humans. In both novels, the apocalypse serves as a warning of ecological collapse, wilderness as the irreversible disruption of the natural order, the pastoral as the collapse of the myth of the harmony of ecosystems, and pollution as the intersection of material, moral, and cognitive pollution. This research stresses that the collapse of the environment in both novels is a physical, but also a cultural and moral collapse, and concerns the difficulties of survival in a disrupted and defunct ecosystem. The article argues that both novels ultimately challenge reducing survival to biological endurance. Meaningful resistance requires retention of cultural memory, ethical responsibility, rationality, and an acknowledgement of humanity’s dependance on the more-than human-world.
Survival, Resilience, Post-Apocalyptic Fiction, Eco critical Reading, Oryx and Crake, The Road
Whispers behind the Seal: Diplomatic Espionage and the Architecture of Narrative Influence
This study examines the evolving relationship between diplomacy, intelligence gathering, and narrative influence in contemporary international relations. It explores how diplomatic missions have historically functioned as both formal channels of interstate communication and platforms for information collection, particularly through diplomatic personnel, social engagements, open-source intelligence, and technological capabilities. The analysis considers the legal framework established by the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, emphasizing the persistent tension between diplomatic immunity, lawful information gathering, and covert espionage. It further investigates how digital diplomacy, social media, artificial intelligence, and data analytics have transformed the collection, interpretation, and dissemination of strategic information. Particular attention is given to the ethical challenges arising from privacy, misinformation, surveillance, algorithmic bias, and accountability. The study argues that modern diplomacy increasingly operates within a hybrid environment where intelligence, communication, and narrative construction intersect, requiring stronger ethical principles and clearer legal norms to preserve trust and responsible statecraft.
Diplomatic Espionage, Diplomatic Intelligence, Narrative Influence, Vienna Convention, Digital Diplomacy, Intelligence Gathering, Social Media, Cyber Espionage, Ethics, International Relations
Nuclear Ambiguity of Iran and Its Influence on Israel's Breakout Capabilities
One of the major unpredictable developments in the Middle East has been the Iranian nuclear programme. The ambiguity regarding Iran regarding its nuclear program, rather than stating it is building a nuclear weapon, raises the possibility of what the country's intentions are and whether it has the means to build one. Such strategic uncertainty has significant implications for Israel since Israel has to decide if Iran's nuclear programme represents civilian technology, deterrent or nuclear breakout preparedness. This paper seeks to critically explore the linkage between Iran's nuclear ambiguity and Israel's strategic calculus in relation to deterrence, breakout preparedness and regional stability. The analysis is based on secondary data of a qualitative nature and considers the strategic implications of nuclear ambiguity, nuclear development in Iran and the reactions of Israel to it. It has been found that ambiguity may work to Israel's advantage as far as creating strategic uncertainties and increasing bargaining power, but it may also serve to heighten the perception of threat and foster military preparedness for countering that threat. Israel's own nuclear ambiguity policy adds to the complexities of the regional strategic landscape.
Iran; nuclear ambiguity; Israel; nuclear breakout; deterrence; nuclear latency; Middle East security
Gender-Inclusive Leadership Climate and Women's Leadership Emergence: The Mediating Role of Leadership Self-Efficacy and the Moderating Role of Psychological Safety
Despite the proliferation of gender diversity initiatives across multinational organizations, women remain systematically underrepresented in formal and informal leadership roles, a disparity that persists even when educational attainment and organizational tenure are held constant. This study addresses an underexplored mechanism through which organizational climate shapes women's leadership emergence by developing and testing a moderated mediation model grounded in Social Cognitive Theory (Bandura, 1977, 1986) and Role Congruity Theory (Eagly & Karau, 2002). Specifically, we propose that gender-inclusive leadership climate fosters leadership self-efficacy among women, which in turn promotes their emergence into leadership roles. We further argue that this mediated pathway is amplified when psychological safety is high, as a psychologically safe environment reduces the perceived interpersonal risk associated with self-presentation as a leader, a risk that is heightened for women owing to role incongruity between the female gender role and the leadership prototype. Data were collected from 350 female employees working in multinational companies operating across four major urban centers in Pakistan, Lahore, Islamabad, Karachi, and Faisalabad, using a purposive sampling strategy and a three-wave, time-lagged research design to mitigate common method bias. Measurement instruments were adapted from well-validated scales, and the hypothesized model was tested using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) with bias-corrected bootstrapped confidence intervals. Findings are expected to reveal that leadership self-efficacy fully mediates the relationship between gender-inclusive leadership climate and women's leadership emergence, and that psychological safety strengthens the indirect effect. Theoretical contributions extend Social Cognitive Theory to the domain of gendered leadership emergence, while practical implications offer actionable guidance for HR practitioners and organizational policymakers seeking to cultivate genuinely inclusive leadership pipelines within emerging market contexts.
gender-inclusive leadership climate, women's leadership emergence, leadership self-efficacy, psychological safety, Social Cognitive Theory, Role Congruity Theory, moderated mediation, PLS-SEM, Pakistan, multinational organizations
Pakistan’s Economic Journey from Development to Debt: Growth, Structural Transformation and External Dependence, 1947–2026
Pakistan's economic development since independence is a very fascinating story. The country was endowed with weak productive institutions, limited industrial capacity, poor infrastructure and high fiscal/foreign exchange shortages when it was founded in 1947 but was to experience some very fast economic growth and industrialization. State directed development planning, foreign aid, modernization of agricultural sector and industrial policy of the 1950s and 1960s brought about change in the economy and comparable growth rates with many countries in the developing world. Despite this early development model, productive structure was not and is not sufficiently diversified and technologically sophisticated, however. On the contrary, the economy of Pakistan continued to be reliant on limited export markets, capital imports, foreign aid, remittances, and external debt. The nationalization of successful companies, political and structural uncertainty and change, energy shortages, weak balance-of-payments crises, and fiscal deficits during the following decades, exacerbated this fragility. It led to a vicious cycle of booms that produced an increase in the demand for imports and of foreign currency shortages, stabilization programs, currency devaluation, and returns to external financing. The structural change in Pakistan has also been found to be one of the slowest in Asia, and the export basket is dominated by less value-added and low-tech products. This article attempts to analyze the economic development of Pakistan in context of the three processes, which are historically related – economic growth, structural transformation and dependence on outside. It is based on the assumption that Pakistan's shift from a developmental economy to a debt dependent economy is not due to public borrowing. However, the vulnerabilities to recurrent debt were created by a combination of partially realized transformation in the economy, lack of export diversification, low rates of domestic savings and investment, tight budgets, energy sector inefficiency, reliance on imports and exposure to external shocks. In addition, the article suggests that foreign assistance and borrowing was a two-fold phenomenon, both directing capital into infrastructure, industrialization, stabilization and developmental works during periods of stress, and the continued use of foreign aid and debt without corresponding structural adjustment resulting in the perpetuation of weaknesses. The program and plan for macroeconomic stabilization had been successful by 2026, but the fundamental challenge of turning short-term stabilization into long-lasting growth in productivity, export diversification, fiscal capacity and productive investment had not been addressed yet. The term "economy industries" refers to a specific group of manufacturing sectors that have the potential to drive the country's economic development. The economy industries refer to a certain class of manufacturing sectors that can contribute to economic development of Pakistan.
Pakistan; economic development; economic growth; structural transformation; external debt; balance of payments; exports; IMF; industrialization; economic history
Deep Learning for Stock Market Prediction: Evidence from the Pakistan Stock Exchange A CNN-BiLSTM Attention Hybrid Framework with Technical-Indicator Fusion
Forecasting the direction and level of stock prices in frontier and emerging markets remains a difficult problem because of thin liquidity, structural breaks, and recurring macro-political shocks. This paper investigates deep learning approaches for one-day-ahead forecasting of the Karachi Stock Exchange 100 (KSE-100) Index of the Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) over a ten-year daily sample (2015–2024) that spans the 2017 political crisis, the 2020 COVID-19 crash, the 2022–2023 balance-of-payments and inflation crisis, and the 2023–2024 post-IMF bull rally. Nineteen price-derived and technical-indicator features (moving averages, MACD, RSI, Bollinger Bands, stochastic oscillators, ATR, and volume) are engineered from raw OHLCV data and fed into a 30-day sliding window. We benchmark a Naive random-walk model, ARIMA(1,1,1), a vanilla LSTM, a GRU, and a CNN-LSTM against a novel CNN-BiLSTM-Attention hybrid that couples one-dimensional convolutional feature extraction with a bidirectional LSTM temporal encoder and an additive attention pooling layer, enabling both accurate forecasting and interpretable identification of the most informative lags in the input window. All deep models are trained to predict the standardized log-return rather than the raw price level, which substantially improves robustness to the strong regime shifts present in the KSE-100 series. Experimental results on a chronologically held-out test set (2024) show that all deep learning architectures reduce RMSE and MAPE relative to ARIMA(1,1,1) and the naive persistence benchmark and achieve directional accuracy of 54–55%, compared with 46.5% for ARIMA and 50% (by construction) for the naive model. The proposed CNN-BiLSTM-Attention model attains the lowest MAPE among the attention-augmented models (1.22%) and provides an interpretable attention profile showing that the model relies most heavily on price action from roughly three to four weeks prior, consistent with the medium-term momentum patterns reported in the Pakistani market literature. The framework, code pipeline, and evaluation protocol are designed to be directly reproducible on live PSX data and are offered as a template for future deep-learning-based forecasting studies on the KSE-100 and other South Asian frontier markets.
Stock market prediction, deep learning, LSTM, GRU, CNN-LSTM, attention mechanism, Pakistan Stock Exchange, KSE-100 Index, technical indicators, time-series forecasting.
Clicks, Comments and Conversations: A Linguistic Study of Social Media Interaction
Social media has become an important space for everyday communication, where users do more than click, like, and share; they also use language to express ideas, emotions, opinions, and relationships. Therefore, this study, examines the linguistic and multimodal resources used in social media comments and their role in developing interaction. The study has two main objectives: to identify resources such as lexical choices, abbreviations, discourse markers, code-mixing, emojis, hashtags, and punctuation, and to examine how these resources perform communicative and interpersonal functions in social media conversations. Furthermore, the study uses an interpretivist philosophy and a qualitative descriptive-interpretive design. Publicly available comments and reply sequences are purposively selected and analyzed through linguistic, discourse, and interactional analysis. Moreover, thematic coding is used to identify recurring patterns while preserving the contextual meaning of comments. The findings show that users employ these resources to express agreement, disagreement, evaluation, support, criticism, humor, identity, and solidarity. However, their meanings often depend on context and their relationship with other comments. The study also finds that individual comments develop into interactional sequences through replies, challenges, explanations, and negotiation of meaning. Consequently, clicks represent participation, comments represent linguistic expression, and conversations demonstrate meaningful interaction. Therefore, future studies should examine larger multilingual datasets and different social media platforms to further understand digital language and interaction.
Social media, Linguistic resources, Multimodal communication, Interaction, Digital discourse.
The Glitch in the Flesh: Archiving the Unruly Soma as Psychosomatic Resistance in Serpell’s The Old Drift
This article examines how the Serpell’s The Old Drift (2019) reimagines resistance through embodied disruption, Afrofuturist imagination, and postcolonial politics. Drawing on Kwet’s theory of digital colonialism and Dunbar’s psychosomatic framework, the study develops the concept of the “glitch in the flesh” to argue that the body functions as an unruly archive that resists complete incorporation into digital systems of surveillance, biometric governance, and technological control. As digital colonialism increasingly seeks to transform human subjects into legible, predictable, and governable data, Serpell foregrounds the instability, vulnerability and unpredictability of embodied existence. This study utilizes Miles and Huberman’s (2014) interactive model of qualitative data analysis, systematically executing the processes of data condensation, data display and conclusion drawing upon the novel’s text. Through a close reading of Jacob, Naila, and the novel’s mosquito chorus, the article demonstrates how technological mastery repeatedly encounters limits that cannot be resolved through greater efficiency or data accumulation. Jacob’s failures expose the fragility of technological rationality, while Naila’s resistance to bodily legibility challenges the reduction of identity to machine-readable code. The mosquito chorus extends this critique through its philosophy of the “law of the flaw” presenting collective biological life as a force that exceeds algorithmic order and centralized control. By bringing psychosomatic theory into conversation with digital colonialism, the article contends that what digital systems classify as error, deviation or noise may constitute a vital archive of resistance. Ultimately, The Old Drift suggests that embodied unpredictability preserves forms of agency that remain beyond the reach of data extraction, technological governance and digital colonial power.
Digital Colonialism, Speculative Fiction, Psychosomatic Unity, Glitch in the Flesh, Somatic resistance
An Ecolinguistic Analysis of English Text Books to Evaluate the Integration of United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals
Depending upon the ecolinguistic analysis the present study investigates the frequency of occurrence of 17SDGs along with eco-beneficial, eco-destructive and eco- ambivalent properties in the text of the English books taught in the schools of Punjab province of Pakistan. A theoretical model presented by He, Wei (2021) has been be utilised to evaluate content. The results show the UN’s 17 SDGs have been integrated more in social dimension while less attention has been paid to environmental and economic dimensions. The same is the case with the results of 5 Pillars of (5Ps) of 17 SDGs; the pillar of ‘people’ has been addressed as the top priority while the pillars of planet, prosperity and partnership have been used in lower frequency. Based on the above analysis, suggestions have been proposed that while designing the next updated version of these text books attentions should be paid to the ignored SDGs and eco-linguistic properties with a justified eco-centric approach to restructure the cognitive patterns of language learners for eco-sustainability.
Ecolinguistics, Sustainable development goals, Eco-beneficial, Eco-destructive, Eco ambivalent, Sustainability, English language teaching
AI-Driven Dynamic Requirement Prioritization in Agile Product Backlogs Using the AISA Framework
Agile software development demands continuous, accurate, and adaptive requirement prioritization. Traditional static methods such as MoSCoW and Kano models fail to accommodate real-time stakeholder dynamics, redundant requirements, and evolving business contexts. This study addresses the research question: How can AI techniques enhance the accuracy and adaptability of requirement prioritization in Agile environments using structured elicitation approaches? This paper proposes the AISA (Accurate, Inclusive, Structured, Adaptive) framework, a hybrid methodology that integrates multi-perspective Viewpoints Grid Elicitation with Artificial Intelligence (AI)-driven analysis, including Natural Language Processing (NLP), sentiment analysis, and dynamic scoring algorithms. The redundancy-detection and Dynamic Demand Prioritization (DDP) components were evaluated on 138 real-world requirements drawn from two domain case studies (healthcare/clinical program administration and consumer e-commerce, sourced from the public PROMISE NFR benchmark dataset): the pipeline flagged 3 near-duplicate requirement pairs, reprioritized 81.9% of requirements relative to a static equal-weighted baseline, and maintained a mean rank correlation of 0.957 with that baseline, showing that AISA's sentiment- and dependency-aware scoring produces materially different, targeted prioritization outcomes on authentic requirement text. Stakeholder-facing outcomes (satisfaction, sprint velocity, and qualitative acceptance) are addressed by a planned human-subject validation study described in Section V.
Requirement Prioritization; Agile Software Development; Viewpoints Elicitation; Artificial Intelligence; Sentiment Analysis; Dynamic Demand Prioritization (DDP); Natural Language Processing; AISA Framework
Beyond Enrollment Parity: Gender Disparity, Campus Climate, and Academic Outcomes in Punjab's Higher Education Institutions
Gender disparity remains a persistent barrier to equitable higher education in developing countries, and Pakistan is no exception. This study examined how gender disparity relates to learning achievements among students attending public and private universities in Punjab, Pakistan. The study used a quantitative, cross-sectional survey design to collect data from 392 students (196 male students and 196 female students) at four universities—the University of Gujrat, the University of the Punjab, Government College University Faisalabad, and Bahauddin Zakariya University Multan—through a structured, pretested interview schedule covering access and enrollment, classroom climate, teaching practices, sociocultural pressures, and career aspirations. Data were analyzed using SPSS 17.0 with univariate, bivariate (chi-square, Gamma), and multivariate (regression) techniques. Results revealed that although enrollment has reached gender parity, female students continue to face disproportionate barriers related to transportation and safety, restrictive campus climates, subtle faculty bias, and sociocultural pressures such as early marriage expectations. Paradoxically, female students reported higher academic performance and confidence than male students on several measures, even as they anticipated greater labor-market discrimination and reported lower career confidence. These findings suggest that gender inequity in Punjab's higher education operates less through access than through everyday institutional and cultural mechanisms that shape the value students can extract from otherwise comparable or superior academic performance. The study concludes that closing this achievement-to-opportunity gap requires coordinated reforms spanning campus safety, faculty training, curriculum content, and labor-market accountability.
gender disparity, higher education, learning achievements, Punjab, Pakistan, educational equity
Identifying the Gender Biases and Stereotypes in Shah’s Before She Sleeps and The Monsoon War: A Feminist Stylistics Study
Feminist stylistics is concerned with the study of language which helps to study gender ideologies and challenge traditional gender roles. It helps to analyse linguistic features in relation to gender, power and identity. The present research aims to identify the gender biases and stereotypes in Shah’s Before She Sleeps (2018) and The Monsoon War (2023) through the lens of feminist stylistics. The present study is conducted at the discourse level by employing the model of Sara Mills (1995), specifically focusing on the elements of characterization and fragmentation in the selected texts. The novels are explored from the perspective of female oppression. The findings of this research indicate that all the selected characters are struggling with internal and outer conflicts. Through characterization, women are oppressed because they are depicted as passive, caregivers, wives and emotional labours. The findings also show that by the process of fragmentation, their identities are broken. The two novels describe an emotionally and psychologically burdened women who are trying to survive in oppressive and patriarchal systems. This work is important because Shah uses stylistic choices to uncover and challenge gender biased stereotypes and power structures.
feminist stylistics, stereotypical roles, oppression, gender
Invisibility and Structural Racism in Mateo Askaripour’s This Great Hemisphere
This article examines how Mateo Askaripour’s This Great Hemisphere represents invisibility as an institutional mechanism of structural racism rather than as a purely metaphorical or individual condition. Although existing scholarship has extensively addressed structural racism, surveillance, recognition, and speculative fiction, these fields remain insufficiently integrated in studies of how racialized subjects are simultaneously rendered visible to systems of control and invisible within structures of citizenship, memory, and social legitimacy. Using qualitative close reading, the study brings Critical Race Theory into dialogue with Simone Browne’s concept of racializing surveillance, Ralph Ellison’s formulation of social invisibility, and Judith Butler’s theory of recognition. The analysis focuses on the novel’s representations of compulsory registration, bodily marking, biometric tracking, historical erasure, and political resistance. It argues that the novel constructs invisibility as a politically produced condition through which bureaucratic and technological institutions classify, monitor, and regulate marginalized populations while withholding equal recognition and belonging. The study further demonstrates that surveillance in the novel does not simply observe racial difference but actively reproduces it by making visibility conditional upon institutional control. Resistance consequently emerges not only as opposition to oppression but also as the reclamation of voice, historical presence, collective agency, and political recognizability. By integrating structural racism, racializing surveillance, invisibility, and recognition within a unified literary analysis, the article shows how contemporary speculative fiction exposes the administrative and technological processes through which racial power is normalized, contested, and sustained.
bureaucratic governance; institutional invisibility; political recognition; racial governance; racialized surveillance; speculative fiction; structural racism
The Impact of Code-Mixing on Readers Comprehension: A Study of the Urdu Newspaper Khabrain
This research investigates the challenges faced by Pakistani readers in understanding code-mixed content in the Urdu newspaper Khabrain, known for its extensive use of code-mixing. The study explored how the blending of English and Urdu in headlines and advertisements affects readers’ comprehension. A survey was conducted with 60 regular readers of Khabrain, along with a face analysis of 60 newspaper samples from Khabrain’s internet archive. Findings revealed that most of the readers were quite familiar with code mixing and perceived it as an efficient tool for better understanding. While some respondents expressed concerns about a lack of understanding and confusion, the overall response supported code mixing, with many linking it to cultural relevance and effective modern communication. The results also show that there is code mixing in newspaper in the sections of articles and advertisements. The study also shows that code mixing has become a part and parcel of Pakistani print media, and it helps to understand news easily.The study further indicates that code mixing reflects a language shift, especially in Pakistani print media, and reveals that it has now become a symbol of social prestige and a symbol of high respect. Readers considered the blend of Urdu and English as a natural reflection of their daily communication patterns. The study also suggests that such linguistic practices enhance the appeal of newspapers among urban readers. However, it highlights the need for balance so that the use of English does not overshadow Urdu’s originality and identity in Pakistani print media.
Code mixing, Urdu Newspaper, Bilingualism, Media, Khabrain
Combating Identity Theft: An Integrated Framework for Proactive Data Breach Prevention and Post-Breach Consumer Protection
Modern life runs on the constant surrender of personal data: streaming, banking, healthcare, and communication all depend on organizations collecting and storing sensitive consumer information. This convenience has a cost, and that cost is a relentless rise in data breaches that have made identity theft one of the most damaging crimes of the digital era. The prevailing response to this crisis is structurally flawed. Organizations and regulators concentrate on building higher technical and legal walls—firewalls, encryption, and statutes such as the GDPR and CCPA while treating a breach as a finish line at which their obligation, satisfied by a legally required notification letter, effectively ends. Consumers, meanwhile, are left to absorb the aftermath largely alone, without guidance on the concrete steps needed to secure their financial and personal identity. This paper argues that treating prevention and consumer protection as separate, sequential problems is no longer tenable and proposes the Integrated Cybersecurity-Consumer Protection Framework (ICCPF) as a corrective model. Grounded in a systematic review of 95 sources spanning academic literature, industry reports, case studies, and regulatory documents, and refined through a Delphi validation exercise with 15 cybersecurity professionals, the ICCPF organizes response around four interdependent pillars Proactive Organizational Defense, Proactive Consumer Empowerment, Post-Breach Organizational Response, and Post-Breach Consumer Action connected by a continuous feedback loop rather than a linear sequence. Expert evaluation rated the framework highly on completeness (4.6/5), expected effectiveness (4.5/5), practical applicability (4.4/5), and implementation feasibility (4.2/5), and sector-based projections and a three-year cost-benefit analysis indicate substantial reductions in fraud, breach incidence, and recovery cost across finance, healthcare, retail, and government contexts. The paper concludes that closing the loop between prevention and recovery is essential to rebuilding digital trust and offers a practical roadmap for organizations, regulators, and consumers to do so.
Data Breach, Identity Theft, Cybersecurity, Consumer Protection, Zero-Trust Architecture, GDPR, Incident Response, Digital Resilience, Post-Breach Recovery