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Despite notable progress on closing gender gaps over the past 20 years, women have less access to jobs, are more likely to take low-quality employment, and face barriers to management positions, a United Nations labor report has found.
The women’s labour force participation rate worldwide stands at 48.5 per cent in 2018, 26.5 percentage points below that of their male counterparts, according to the World Employment and Social Outlook: Trends for Women 2018 – Global snapshot, released on the eve of International Women’s Day.
The report, authored by the UN International Labour Organization (ILO), also shows that the global unemployment rate for women is six per cent for 2018, about 0.8 percentage points higher than that for men.
Altogether, for every 10 men in a job, only six women are employed.
In regions such as the Arab States and Northern Africa, female unemployment rates are still twice as large as men’s, with prevailing social norms continuing to obstruct women’s participation in paid employment.
However, women in Eastern Europe and North America register lower unemployment rates than men.
Women also face significant gaps in the quality of the employment they are in. They are more than twice as likely to be contributing family workers. This means that they contribute to a market-oriented family business, but are often subject to vulnerable conditions of employment without written contracts, collective agreements and respect for labour legislation.
As a result, women are still overrepresented in informal employment in developing countries.
The report notes that globally, four times as many men are working as employers than women in 2018. Women continue to face barriers in accessing management positions.
