Global Employment Trends for Women

World Economic Outlook, October 2008 says “the baseline growth projections have been marked down significantly relative to the July 2008 World Economic Outlook. On an average annual basis, global growth is expected to moderate from 5.0 percent in 2007 to 3.9 percent in 2008 and 3.0 percent in 2009, its slowest pace since 2002. The advanced economies would be in or close to recession in the second half of 2008 and early 2009, and the anticipated recovery later in 2009 will be exceptionally gradual by past standards.” [1] It is in this light that the Global Employment Trends for Women 2009 is set and points out that global unemployment rate increased for the first time in the last four years from 5.7 percent in 2007 to 6 percent in 2008 with 193 million unemployed worldwide. The unemployment rates for women are higher which indicates the existing inequality in the global labour markets. Another aspect of this inequality is marked by poor access to labour markets. Low level of economic empowerment results in lower labourforce participation with 77.5% for males and only 52.6 % for females in 2008 (Table A4, Global Employment Trends for Women, March 2009). Further, it is to be noted that the gap between the males and females are narrowing at a very slow pace. Similar is the trend with employment - to - population ratio. Adult employment to population ratios are lowest for the females in the Middle East, followed by North Africa and South Asia.

The report clearly states that despite the progress made in many regions of the world lesser number of women participate in the labour markets than men. In the case of developed countries women are free to decide not to enter the labour market, in the developing countries it may be an obligation since many women may prefer to work if socially acceptable. The case however remains that women undertake all household responsibilities but are classifies as outside the labourforce.

Out of the total global employment only 40.4% are females and among them very few are engaged in industry and the large majority are in agriculture and, increasingly, in the services sector. The services sector accounted for 46.3 per cent of all female employment in 2008, as compared to 41.2 per cent of male employment. The difference in the share of industrial employment remains same globally. However, women are still overrepresented in the agricultural sector. Globally, the share of women employed in agriculture stands at 35.4 per cent, as compared to 32.2 per cent for men and minus the industrialized regions [like the Developed Economies and the European Union, Central and South Eastern Europe (non-EU) & CIS and Latin America and the Caribbean] the share of women in agriculture is nearly 50%. In Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia the agricultural sector makes up more than 60 per cent of all female employment.

At the global level, the share of vulnerable[2] employment in total female employment was 52.7 per cent in 2007, as compared to 49.1 per cent for men, and a shift to wage and salaried work can be definite step toward economic independence. The share of women in wage and salaried work grew from 41.8 per cent in 1997 to 45.5 per cent in 2007, but the status group of female own-account workers saw a stronger increase. The gender gap in the share of vulnerable employment in total employment for males and females shows a diverse picture by region. In the Developed Economies and the European Union, Central and South Eastern Europe (non-EU) & CIS and Latin America, and the Caribbean, this gap was negative in 2007, meaning that women are often in less vulnerable jobs than men. The largest gaps can be found in North Africa and the Middle East. Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, two of the poorest regions, have not only a relatively high share of vulnerable employment in total employment, but also a relatively large gender gap in vulnerable employment shares. Heavy investment in women’s education, changes in the labour legislation and recognition and sharing of family responsibilities with men set the preconditions for women to equally participate in labour markets. Thus the report emphasizes that access to labour markets does not mean access to decent jobs. This fact is illustrated with a case study of Pakistan where labour markets are characterized by large gender gaps.

In Pakistan from 2000 to 2006, the employment-to-population rate increased by almost six percentage points.  However, during the same period, the share of vulnerable employment in total employment of women increased by 6.5 points. This is mainly due to the increase in the number of female contributing as family workers who work without any formal arrangement thus lack in social security and safety nets.

The report also explains the crisis in terms of food insecurity and acknowledges the fact that rural development is a key to poverty reduction. It is not only in this connection that the agricultural sector should be in our focus but also as a key towards gender equality as majority of working women still remain in this sector. It is said that Africa suffered more severely from the recent food crisis than other continents and among other reasons the failure of the sector have been gender inequality and lack of empowerment of women, who are often running this sector.

The ILO report indicates that country level analysis does make it clear that the majority of jobs in agriculture are most likely lacking some elements of decent and productive work. Women mainly work as contributing family workers and men very often are own-account workers. And if women manage to change their status it often means moving from being an unpaid contributing family worker to being an own-account worker.

The question then necessarily arises – What makes the vulnerable employment turn to decent work? One of the precondition of decent work is that productivity should rise This will not only lay the groundwork for earnings to rise sufficiently for people to escape poverty, but it is often the first step towards more social security and other components of decent work. However, the majority of women in agriculture are smallholder subsistence farmers or spouses of smallholder subsistent farmers, financial resources are limited for women and they have to undertake the tasks in the fields in addition to those for which they are traditionally responsible. Given the key role of women in the agricultural sector, improving their situation means progress for the sector and for the economy as a whole. And many of the measures that would be beneficial are not even costly to implement for eg. Increasing women’s access to farming land and fertilizers, credit, and education; increasing women’s participation in decision-making; and strengthening women’s role within the family.

Another dimension of access to decent and productive employment is the measure of the gender pay gap (or gender wage differential), i.e. the difference between the wages earned by women and those earned by men. Recent analyses of labour markets in Europe and Central Asia reached the conclusion that although the reduction of the gender pay gap is a major political objective for governments and the social partners, progress remains slow and the situation has even deteriorated in certain countries.  Throughout most regions and many occupations, women are paid less money than men for the same job. In a majority of countries, women’s wages represent between 70 and 90 per cent of men’s wages, with even lower ratios in some Asian and Latin American countries.

Gender inequality in poverty in developing economies saw a continuation of the downward trends in working poverty witnessed in the recent years. Estimates of the proportion of the employed who are working but also fall below an accepted

poverty line (the working poor) in two regions that stand out in terms of high shares of extremely working poor are Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, while levels of working poverty are also considerable in South-East Asia and the Pacific, and East Asia. In South Asia, women also have disadvantages in terms of access to education, which limits their chances on decent and productive work. The national labour force survey in India also captures information on children below the age of 15. These data provide evidence that young girls bear the brunt of poverty-induced child labour.

The report also contributes a separate section on Gender impact of the economic crisis in developed economies. It is indicated that male unemployment rate in the Developed Economies and the European Union was 6.6 per cent in 2008, an increase by 1.1 percentage points over 2007, as compared to 6.8 per cent for women, an increase of 0.8 percentage points over 2007. The regional unemployment rate, which is based on a preliminary estimate for 2008, does clearly point out to the case that economic crisis had more of an impact on men rather than women when it comes to the labour market in developed economies. At the country level, the report research and media reports at times seem to point in different directions regarding the gender dimension of the economic crisis, depending on the region, country or period under consideration. Differences in impact of the crisis on male and female employment can therefore be expected on the basis of the sectoral distributions of employment by sex, but the full impact can only be analysed when sufficient sectoral data become available, covering in particular the second half of 2008, which is not yet the case in most countries. However, in the US considering all sectors, it is clear that male employment suffered more, both in absolute and in relative terms. Nationally, male employment declined by 2.3 million, and female employment by 0.6 million between Decemcer 2007 – December 2008.

The report also suggests that labour market outlook for 2009 will depend much on the efficacy of the government measures as well as the time needed for the global economy to find a path toward sustainable and equitable growth. Based on the January 2009 update of the IMF’s World Economic Outlook it is suggested that:

·        The group of advanced economies is expected to contract by 2.0 per cent, and the emerging and developing economies are expected to grow by 3.3 per cent, a much lower growth rate than in 2008.

·        The historical relationship between economic growth and unemployment at times of crisis indicates that the slowdown in economic growth from 2008 to 2009 is significant in the newly industrialized Asian economies, the Commonwealth of Independent States and in particular the Russian Federation, and in Brazil. This would mean that the global unemployment rate may rise to 6.5 per cent for women in 2009, and to 6.1 per cent for men. the global unemployment rate for women would rise to 7.0 per cent, and to 6.5 per cent for men, in both cases an increase of 1.0 percentage points over 2007. For women, however, the largest impact on the unemployment rate is seen in Latin America and the Caribbean, reflecting both the sharp slowdown in economic growth and the severely disadvantaged position of women in labour markets in this region.

·        Finally, the unemployment rate is projected in each country as the rate in 2008 based on the largest change in unemployment for males and females separately since 1991, taking the differences between developed economies and developing economies into account. In view of the fact that in developing economies the main impact of the current crisis is more likely to be seen in the vulnerable employment rate, the impact on unemployment can be expected to be less severe than in developed economies.

The scenario in terms of vulnerable employment suggests that the projection of the absolute number of people in vulnerable employment showing a decrease for both men and women, by ten and eight million persons, respectively would not hold true in the light of the recent crisis. It is however indicated that the vulnerable employment rate would still fall in 2009, but by only 0.4 percentage points for men. For women, the decrease would be 1.0 percentage points. In 2009, the third scenario suggests a rise of the proportion of workers in vulnerable employment to 53.0 per cent, which would wipe out more than ten years in the reduction of decent work deficits as captured in the vulnerable employment rate. East Asia is the only region that would still see a reduction in the female vulnerable employment rate in this scenario, and the vulnerable employment rate for males would rise in all regions.

In all three scenarios for 2009, the impact on the vulnerable employment rate is stronger for men than for women at the global level, in other words male vulnerable employment rates rise more than female rates. Latin America and the Caribbean is the only region in which in all three scenarios the opposite is true. On the other hand, the gender impact at the regional level is expected to show a varied picture. It is important to note here, the report goes on to emphasise that more important than gender differences in the impact of the crisis in developing regions may well be the existing disadvantages faced by women in labour markets as evident from large gender gaps in labour market indicators, and the fact that labour markets will deteriorate for both women and men due to the crisis.

Policy interventions:

The report accepts that the present crisis makes the path toward sustained and equitable growth with decent work all the more difficult. This calls for policy coherence at the level of finance, trade, economic development and labour. Calling the crisis an opportunity to drive new ways of thinking on economic and social policies, it is imperative that when governments design and implement fiscal stimulus packages, they recognize the labour market disadvantage that women face through the equity challenge, and to consider explicit employment growth targets for women. Further, given the role women undertake outside the labour market it is also important to bring in policies that improve sharing of those responsibilities with men so that women have chances for better access to labour markets. Further, priorities should not only be on infrastructure projects which create jobs in the short term, but social investments in care services which reduce the pressure on women performing unpaid work. The significance of a strong public social security system that includes women and spouses is highlighted in this crisis as women in developing countries do not often benefit from these schemes.

In the backdrop of the crisis and shrinking jobs that a new charter for sustainable economic governance was called for in a joint press release on the global economic crisis by the German Chancellor, the OECD Secretary-General, the WTO Director-General, the ILO Director-General, the IMF Managing Director and the World Bank President. It recognized that the ‘ILO's Decent Work Agenda provides complementary elements regarding employment and enterprise development, social protection, human working conditions, sound labour relations and rights at work.’ It also pointed out that the crisis has had extensive effects on developing countries, and that it is more important than ever for the international community to remain committed to advancing the implementation of the Millennium Development Goals. These goals include achieving full and productive employment and decent work for all, and promoting gender equality and empowering women.