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)