• Work and employment

Work and employment

The current financial crisis will impact heavily on both women’s and men’s efforts to find and keep decent work. This report makes the case for scaling up measures to eliminate sex discrimination in the world of work and highlights International Labour Organisation (ILO) interventions in all regions. The authors give an overview of ILO efforts to improve labour protection and promote the adoption of a basic social security package that assists both women and men. Establishing technically feasible and financially viable ways of extending coverage of basic health care, family/child benefits, targeted income support for the poor and unemployed, and old-age and disability pensions would provide a minimum safety net. Since poverty has a gender dimension that cannot be ignored, and the effects of economic growth have not trickled down to the poorest, public policies that encourage a fair distribution of national resources by implementing social security systems would make a substantial contribution to lifting the poorest out of extreme poverty.

Development policies and programmes must challenge stereotyped assumptions about gender roles that have become systemic according to the authors. Proactive measures should be used, such as affirmative action, awareness raising on workers’ rights, lifelong skills development and women’s economic empowerment. Outdated systems that affect gender-neutral job evaluation for equal pay should be reformed. The report provides main policy orientations for international and national action. These may guide the tripartite constituents in implementing measures to advance gender equality in the workplace, while charting a strategic course for the ILO’s future work as it approaches its centennial. Main conclusions include:

• there is clear evidence of a gender gap in high-level positions around the world
• good governance is necessary for tripartism, employment policy and labour inspection and means giving voice to the women and men to whom leaders are accountable
• progress is continually challenged and many obstacles remain to the achievement of gender equality, such as the poor implementation and enforcement of national policies
• one specific challenge relates to the systems that are used when analysing labour markets and preparing national data sets, which were not designed with the aim of tracking the differing impacts that policies and programmes may have on women and on men
• sex discrimination has not disappeared from the world of work shows a lack of political commitment and – in some contexts – legal laxity, but the underlying cause remains embedded in societal attitudes.
  

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