Gender inequality in the labor market is greater than previously thought, says ILO – 06/03/2023 – Market

Women face more difficulties in accessing the world of work than previously thought, and the difference in wages and conditions has remained almost unchanged over the past two decades, the International Labor Organization (ILO) warned this Monday (6).

The ILO claimed to have developed a new indicator that better measures the unemployment rate and detects all jobless people looking for some activity.

That casts “a much bleaker picture of the situation of women in the world of work than the more commonly used unemployment rate,” the UN agency said in a statement two days before International Women’s Day.

“The new data show that women continue to have much more difficulty finding work than men,” the agency said.

According to ILO data, 15% of women of working age in the world would like to have a job, but do not, against 10.5% of men.

“This gender inequality has remained largely unchanged for two decades,” the organization noted.

In contrast, official unemployment rates for men and women are very similar.

This is due, according to the ILO, to the fact that the criteria used to determine whether someone should be considered officially unemployed tend to disproportionately exclude women.

According to the report, personal and family responsibilities, including unpaid care work, disproportionately affect women.

This type of activity prevents women from working, actively looking for a job, or being available at short notice.

“The (gender) gap at work is especially serious in developing countries, where the proportion of women who cannot find a job reaches 24.9% in low-income countries,” the agency said.

Access to employment is not the only problem. The ILO has observed that women tend to be over-represented in some vulnerable jobs, including in family businesses.

“This vulnerability, along with lower employment rates, has an impact on women’s incomes,” the agency said.

The ILO concluded that “worldwide, for every dollar of labor income earned by men, women earn only 51 cents”.