More women work but are still paid less
More women work but are still paid less
JAKARTA (JP): Over 45 percent of all the world's women aged 15
to 64 earn money but they are paid on average 25 percent less
than men, the International Labor Organization (ILO) says.
Outside of agriculture, the majority of women earn on average
about three-fourths of men's wages for the same work in both
developed and developing countries, according to the ILO report
entitled More & Better Jobs For Women which was released
yesterday.
"The bottom line is that while more and more women are
working, the great majority of them are simply swelling the ranks
of the working poor," Lin Lean Lim, author of the report, said.
"Women's economic activities remain highly concentrated in
low-wage, low-productivity and precarious forms of employment,"
she added.
Women make up nearly 70 percent of the world's poor and 65
percent of the world's illiterate.
More than half of the women in industrialized countries are
employed. Two decades ago, only 37 percent of women in Western
Europe and 30 percent in the United States were employed. Between
65 percent and 90 percent of the part-time workers in developed
countries are women, the report said.
In developing countries, women make up 31 percent of the labor
force, but their participation is rising.
In Southeast Asia, the percentage of women in the work force
has risen to 54 percent from 49 percent two decades ago. In South
Asia, it has risen to 44 percent from 25 percent in the same
period.
Over the past two decades, the number of women in the labor
force in Latin America has risen from 22 percent to 34 percent,
and in northern Africa from eight percent to 21 percent.
In regional terms, only the Gulf States continue to resist the
trend toward increased female employment, but the number of
female migrant workers in these countries is increasing steadily.
Women in developing countries spend between 31 and 42 hours
per week doing unpaid work (at home), whereas men spend only five
to 10 hours.
In developing countries women tend to work in informal
industries. In Indonesia, 65 percent of women work in informal
industries.
The report said that, in East and Southeast Asia, up to 80
percent of the workers in export processing zones are women.
ILO Director General Michel Hansenne, when commenting on the
growing contribution of women to the global workforce, said:
"Their relatively cheap labor has represented the cornerstone of
export-oriented industrialization and international
competitiveness for many developing countries."
The report found that women were entering more formerly male-
dominated jobs, although occupational segregation according to
sex remained high all over the world.
"Not only do men and women have different occupations," Lin
said. "Men commonly do work of higher pay and status; for
example, most school administrators and doctors are men, while
most teachers and nurses are women."
The report, citing data for some 500 non-agricultural
occupations in the U.S., Britain and France, shows that
approximately 45 percent of the labor force is organized around
gender-dominated occupations in which either women or men make up
at least 80 percent of the workforce.
In Japan, 95 percent of people working as day-care workers,
hospital attendants, nurses, kindergarten teachers, housekeepers,
maids and entertainers are women. (sim)