Question

role of labour in empowering women ​

Answer 1

role of labour in empowering women

A review of the empirical patterns and trends in women’s work in past decades testifies to the durability of gender as a form of disadvantage. While female labour participation rates have increased globally, with women having moved out of agriculture into services and manufacturing, this hasn’t necessarily signified a movement into productive and decent forms of work as highlighted by the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

Many more women than men remain out of the labour force, many more are unemployed, and, among those who have work, many more are crowded into the lower ranks of the occupational hierarchy. The gender gap in earnings has diminished but at such a slow pace that, according to the International Labour Organization (ILO), it will take more than 75 years to achieve equal pay. Of particular relevance to these inequalities within the labour market is a key inequality outside it: women’s increasing entry into paid work has not been accompanied by a commensurate change in the gender division of unpaid labour within the home. As a result, working women tend to work longer hours than men, giving rise to the phenomenon of “time poverty.”

These trends clearly beg the question of whether the paid work available to women can be considered empowering. What we can reasonably assume is that the empowerment potential of paid work is likely to be greater when women take it up as a response to opportunity rather than as a response to distress, and when they can choose from a wide range of opportunities rather than being confined to a narrow range of female-intensive occupations. To make this happen, we need to understand the barriers to change.

Answer 2

An expansion of economic opportunities throughemployment-centred growth would create a hospitable macroeconomic environment for women's empowerment, without setting men and womenin competition with each other for decent forms of work