The biggest challenge facing women? Jobs

LONDON: The world would be a better place for women if they had access to more and better quality jobs, according to a street survey of women and men in 10 countries in Europe, the Americas, Africa and Asia. Ahead of International Women’s Day on March 8, the Thomson Reuters Foundation asked about 100 people in Britain, Italy, the United States, Ethiopia, Kenya, Senegal, India, Thailand, Brazil and Colombia what they saw as the biggest challenge for women.

The answers varied from concerns over violence against women to an unfair share of housework but the overwhelming concern was employment - that women had equal access to jobs, equal pay, and the flexibility to juggle work with raising children. “For any woman having a better life means having a good job. This will make life better - work, a job and a salary to take care of herself and her dependents,” said Yolradee Saiemi, 44, a jewelry seller at a Bangkok market. Abdoulaye Diop Ndao, 26, a security guard in Dakar, Senegal, said life was difficult for women in Senegal. “They wake up early to find work, to buy fish and vegetables to sweep and sort out the house. If we give women good jobs, create businesses for them, we can help our families,” he said. “The biggest problem here is employment. They don’t have an adequate job. Or they are hustlers,” said Richard Kiarie Lutta, a bus driver in Nairobi, Kenya, aged in his 30s. “The world would be better for women if they have a good job.”

Fewer women than men work globally, with about half of working age women in jobs in 2015 compared to 76 percent of men, according to figures from the International Labor Organization. Women are paid less in most countries, earning on average only 60-75 per cent of men’s wages, according to the World Bank. —Reuters