英语论文网

In 2007, 1.2 billion women around the world worked, almost 200 million or 18.4 per centmore than ten years ago.1 But, the number of unemployed women also grew from 70.2 to 81.6million over the same period and in 2007, women at the global level still had a higher likelihood ofbeing unemployed than men. The female unemployment rate stood at 6.4 per cent compared tothe male rate of 5.7 per cent. (See table 3.) As for women who do find work, they are oftenconfined to work in the less productive sectors of economies and in status groups that carry highereconomic risk and a lesser likelihood of meeting the characteristics that define decent work,including access to social protection, basic rights and a voice at work.

Also, as a result of the typeof work where women can find employment (in terms of both sector and status), they often earnless than men.But, is it all bad news concerning female labour market trends? Certainly not, there aresome positive trends as well: education levels for women around the world continue to increaseand gender gaps for certain labour market indicators are decreasing in many regions. To findwhich regions are making progress in the economic integration of women and in offering them anequal chance at attaining decent work, this year’s Global Employment Trends for Women2 is organizedaccording to nine regional trends analyses.3 The report shows clearly that most regions are makingprogress in increasing the number of women in decent employment, but that full gender equalityin terms of labour market access and conditions of employment has not yet been attained.Economic empowerment for women has a lot to do with their ability or inability toparticipate in labour markets and with the conditions of employment that the women who domanage to find work face. The international community stresses more and more the fact thatpromoting decent work is the only sustainable way out of poverty.
In fact, a new target wasrecently introduced in the Millennium Development Goals calling for “full and productiveemployment and decent work for all”.4 There is also growing recognition that labour markets arethe key transmission mechanism through which the benefits of growth can be distributed to thepoor and disadvantaged groups. Access to labour markets and, more specifically, to decentemployment is thereby crucial in the process towards improving equality between men andwomen. Decent work for women is also a precondition for economic development since, in the long run, economiescannot afford to ignore an untapped resource such as that which could be offered by female labour.In this context it is interesting to note that the most successful region in terms ofeconomic growth over the last decade, namely East Asia, is also the region with the highestregional labour force participation rate for women, low unemployment rates for both women andmen and relatively small gender gaps in sectoral as well as status distribution. Of course, there aremany reasons that drive economic development – making the most of the productive potential of