Jobs for women

The good news for women is that increasing number of them are entering the labor market, enabling them to use their skills and achieve a measure of economic independence. This does not necessarily mean, however, that the gap between men and women participation in the labor market is closing or that women who seek employment are finding any.
In the year 2003, out of the 2.8 billion people who had work, 1.1 billion were female or just above 40% share in the global employment, according to the ILO. But in terms of quality the picture is not so pretty. There is still no real empowerment for women or equitable share of household responsibilities, equal pay for equal work or gender balance. True equality between men and women remains out of reach although more women are employed today than ever.
The global unemployment rate of 2003 was only slightly higher for women (6.4%) than for men (6.1%) leaving almost 78 million women who want to work without employment. Sub-Sahara Africa is the only region of the world where unemployment rates are lower for women than for men whereas in the Middle East and North Africa, female unemployment is 6% higher than those for men. This situation, for the most part, has shown little movement in the last ten years, according to the ILO.
Slightly less than 36 million young women between the ages of 15 to 24 can find work of any kind. But again in Sub-Sahara there are more young men without jobs than young women.
You will find more women working in the service sector earning less than men for the same work and they are more likely to find employment in the informal economy where there is no legal protection, no benefits or security and where there is high degree of vulnerability for exploitation.
At a 60% share in the world’s working poor, more females work but do not earn enough to lift themselves and their families above the poverty line of one USD per day. An estimated 330 of the 550 million working poor in the world are women. A conservative 400 million jobs are needed to satisfy women’s needs for gainful employment
This sounds like a recital of the same old statistical facts one picks up on the corridors of conference halls of Addis Ababa. As a matter of fact, it is nothing more than a recital from an ILO paper. But it drives the point that women are still underprivileged in almost all sectors of society all over the world and that they have a long way to go to achieve anything resembling economic equality with men.
Policy makers will have to place employment for women at the center of the country’s social and economic policies recognizing that the women’s problems in the world of work are more substantial than men’s. And, problem is bigger than what the government can achieve single handedly. Like all the other major problems in Sub-Sahara it requires that all sectors chip in.
Every sector of society and government is responsible for helping women by creating employment opportunity that give them a chance to work themselves out of poverty.
One thing is for sure. There is no way that the millennium goals of reducing poverty by 50% by 2015 can be achieved without improving the lot of the majority of the women who are today toiling in sub-human conditions.