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By Bimbola Oyesola , [email protected]
As the world celebrated the International Women’s Day last week, more facts have emerged of greater disparity in the world of work in relation to women’s employment. This year’s theme #Embrace Equity further revealed that there has been a great level of inequality as the new indicator developed by the International Labour Organization explained.
According to the ILO, a new report finds that women’s access to employment, working conditions and pay gap have barely improved in the past two decades.
The global world body noted that gender imbalances in access to employment and working conditions are greater than previously thought and progress in reducing them has been disappointingly slow in the last twenty years.
A new indicator developed by the ILO, the Jobs Gap, captures all persons without employment that are interested in finding a job. It paints a much bleaker picture of the situation of women in the world of work than the more commonly used unemployment rate.
The new data, the ILO said shows that women still have a much harder time finding a job than men.
The ILO said the New data shine light on gender gaps in the labour market with 15 percent of working-age women globally would like to work, but do not have a job, compared with 10.5 percent of men. “This gender gap has remained almost unchanged for two decades (2005-2022),” the ILO said.
In contrast, the report expressed that the global unemployment rates for women and men are very similar, because the criteria used to define unemployment tends to disproportionately exclude women.
It stated that the jobs gap is particularly severe in developing countries where the proportion of women unable to find a job reaches 24.9 percent in low-income countries.
“The corresponding rate for men in the same category is 16.6 percent, a worryingly high level, but significantly lower than that for women,” it noted.
The brief points out that personal and family responsibilities, including unpaid care work, disproportionately affect women.
These activities, it reasoned can prevent them not only from being employed, but also from actively searching for employment or being available to work at short notice.
The report said, “It is necessary to meet these criteria to be considered unemployed, so many women in need of a job are not reflected in the unemployment figures.
“Gender imbalances in decent work are not limited to access to employment. While vulnerable employment is widespread for both women and men, women tend to be overrepresented in certain types of vulnerable jobs. For instance, women are more likely to be helping out in their households or in their relatives’ businesses rather than being in own-account work.”
The ILO emphasised that this vulnerability, together with lower employment rates, takes a toll on women’s earnings, stating that globally, for each dollar of labour income men earn, women earned only 51 cents.
The brief finds out that there are significant differences between regions, in low and lower-middle income countries, the gender disparity in labour income is much worse, with women earning 33 cents and 29 cents on the dollar respectively. While in high-income and upper-middle income countries, women’s relative labour income reaches 58 and 56 cents respectively per dollar earned by men.
“This striking disparity in earnings is driven by both women’s lower employment level, as well as their lower average earnings when they are employed,” ILO stated.
It added “The new estimates shine light on the magnitude of gender disparities in labour markets, underscoring how important it is to improve women’s overall participation in employment, to expand their access to employment across occupations, and to address the glaring gaps in job quality that women face.”
