‘Rampant’ discrimination against women at work – UN

AS THE world marked International Women’s Day, a new report by the UN finds that despite notable progress on closing gender gaps over the past 20 years, women face rampant discrimination at work.

The report, “World employment and social outlook: trends for women 2018 – global snapshot”, released on Wednesday, stated women have less access to jobs, are likely to take low-quality employment, and face barriers to management positions.

“The women’s labour force participation rate worldwide stands at 48.5% in 2018, 26.5 percentage points below that of their male counterparts,” stated the report, which was authored by the International Labour Organisation (ILO).

The report also showed that the global unemployment rate for women was 6% for 2018, about 0.8 percentage points higher than that for men. For every 10 men in a job, only six women were employed.

In regions such as the Arab states and northern Africa, female unemployment rates were twice as large as men’s, with social norms obstructing women’s participation.

However, women in Eastern Europe and North America registered lower unemployment rates than men.

Women also faced significant gaps in the quality of employment. They were more than twice as likely to be contributing family workers.

This meant they contributed to a market-oriented family business, but were often subject to vulnerable conditions without written contracts, collective agreements and respect for labour legislation.It noted that, globally, four times as many men were employers than women in 2018. – African News Agency (ANA)