THERE is no gainsaying the fact that labour markets will deteriorate because of the global economic crisis. A recent report, Global Employment Trends for Women by the International Labour Organisation (ILO), suggests that there is a gender aspect too to its impact on jobs. The magnitude of the crisis will unfold only in the months to come.
But responses from policymakers, including those in India, which began with a denial of the projected impact of the slowdown, have been slow and inadequate. In fact, trade unions in India were quite surprised when a Minister recommended that employees be prepared for wage cuts. And, given the fact that various gender differentials already exist in employment, working conditions and wages, the report, which looks at the gender impact of the economic crisis, gains more significance.
The report, a sequel to the Global Employment Trends 2009 released early this year, underscores one of the recurrent themes in ILO documents over the years: lack of access to decent work will only increase poverty and social instability. It is not desirable, therefore, to have a huge workforce employed in what does not constitute decent work and decent terms of employment. Stating that the emerging trends are extremely worrying for both men and women, the report says the time has come for a coordinated effort internationally to stop the slowdown.
The report includes a new category called the vulnerable employed to denote own-account workers and unpaid family workers. These workers are in the informal or unorganised sector and are characterised by insecurity of employment, and have no social security, bargaining power or decent wages.
At the global level, the share of the vulnerable employed among all women employed is as high as 52.7 per cent compared with 49.1 per cent for men, says the report. Vulnerable employment exists all over the world but is acute in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia. The conclusion that emerges is that the shift away from vulnerable forms of employment into regular, salaried wage work will result in real economic freedom and economic independence for women. This, in turn, will have an impact on the social status of women.
The report further says that while the share of women in wage and salaried work grew from 41.8 per cent in 1997 to 45.5 per cent in 2007, the corresponding increase of female own-account workers was much higher. Own-account workers have fewer formal arrangements of work, lack social protection and safety nets, and are incapable of generating enough savings at times of financial crises.
The report does not specify whether the disadvantages for women in the current global crisis will be more compared with those of men, but given the large employment of women in agriculture, where wages and returns in most parts of the world continue to be very low, there is no doubt that the economic situation for these sections can only be expected to worsen.
The report calls for greater investment in female education, changes in labour legislation and the setting up of certain conditions that enable sharing of family responsibilities so that women can participate equally in labour markets. Studies conducted by the ILO in Bangladesh show that as womens education improved, the male-female wage gap decreased. But in addition to providing education, the onus on governments is to make commitments to free and accessible health care and provide foodgrains at low prices. In India, it is a well-known fact that high health care expenditure is a major reason for rural indebtedness and that out-of-pocket expenditure on health is as high as 80 per cent. The governments expenditure on health is less than 1 per cent of the gross domestic product (GDP).
Gender differentials, says the report, come from a number of reasons, including crowding of women in low-paying industries and differences in skills and work experience. More often than not, it is the demand from industry for women in low-paying jobs that results in the overcrowding of women. Certain types of industries prefer women for certain categories of jobs that offer low wages. Training women workers for skilled-category jobs is a non-existent practice. They are driven out of economic necessity to settle for low-paying jobs and debilitating working conditions.
The impact of the crisis, with its gender differentials, is not going to be the same in all parts of the world. The crisis may prove to be devastating for men and women equally in developed economies, with the unemployment rates for men slightly higher than those of women. According to the report, the ranks of the unemployed increased by 13.8 million between 2007 and 2008, marking the largest year-on-year increase in recent times.
In fact, what is noticeable is a reduction in the gender gap of the rate of unemployment. Of the total 193 million of unemployed the world over, men constituted 112 million and women 81 million. Access to labour markets is stated as one of the reasons for the low employment of women.
If decent work was easily accessible, there is little doubt that women would have joined the ranks of the employed in huge numbers. In the absence of work qualifying as decent and of a permanent nature, men have the greater advantage than women in negotiating jobs. Significantly, the question that needs to be addressed more aggressively by the ILO and others is whether decent work is easily available.
Gender pay gap is prevalent all over the world, including in the United States. The report notes with concern that the reduction in the gender pay gap has slowed down. In developed economies, there was a reduction in the gender gap in the unemployment rate in 2008, which implied that the situation of men in the labour market had worsened than that of women. It is for these reasons that the report is unable to conclude that women have been more adversely affected by the economic crisis in developed economies.
Between 1995 and 2005, the sector having the highest employment growth rate for both men and women in the developed economies was real estate, renting and business activities. In financial intermediation, the sector where the crisis originated, employment distribution was slightly more favourable to women than men. Hence, the report surmises, the impact of the crisis in this sector would have affected women more than men.
Economic status plays a major role in labour force participation by women. In developed countries, the report argues, a low rate of employment of women may indicate that women here have a choice and can afford not to enter the labour market. But in developing countries, this choice is absent. This, besides other social factors, is a reason for women opting not to enter the labour market. The report says that these women who stay at home do a lot of household activities and shoulder a lot of unpaid family care responsibilities, which does not reflect in the national incomes of governments as such work is classified as non-economic activity.
The broad trend observed in India and perhaps the rest of South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa is that women, out of sheer economic necessity and to meet the high cost of living, cutting across caste, community and religious lines, enter the labour market in a thousand ways which are still to be recognised as economic activity by their governments.
For instance, there are lakhs of women employed in home-based work, doing piece-rate jobs where they are paid unimaginably low rates. They are quite invisible as they are unregistered workers, without any legislative or social entitlement. Likewise, there are hordes of women employed as domestic workers, who again lack any wage structure or protective legislative system.
As the report shows, a very small proportion of women are employed in industry while the large majority are employed in agriculture. There is what is called an overrepresentation of women in agriculture. Almost everywhere in the world, there are fewer women employed in industry as compared to other sectors.
While the feminisation of agriculture and of poverty has become a cliched term, the feminisation of industry is yet to happen. What the report does not explain are the reasons for the growing feminisation of agriculture. Is it a sign of distress or of hidden prosperity? Globally, the share of women employed in agriculture stands at 35.4 per cent as compared to 32.2 per cent for men. It is almost 60 per cent in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, which perhaps means that this is where governments ought to direct their policies for women in order to create decent conditions of work.
The services sector is another area which has seen a burgeoning of female employment in recent times. According to the report, in 2008, the services sector accounted for 46.3 per cent of all female employment while male employment comprised 41.2 per cent. The conditions of work and wages, of course, vary from region to region though it can be safely surmised that the worst conditions prevail in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. Much of the work in agriculture as well as the services sector is unorganised, devoid of any overarching legislation that guarantees social security and decent wages.
But then there are government policies itself which may need to be reversed. The report highlights the global food crisis that originated with the neglect of agriculture and hit countries in Africa the most. This, in turn, affected women who were employed, and continue to be employed, in agriculture in large numbers. Africa, which was more than self-sufficient in food 50 years ago, is now a massive food importer, says the report, quoting a study.
The reports analysis that one of the reasons for the failure of the sector is gender inequality and lack of empowerment of women is inadequate in the least as much of international attention and donor-driven funding for development for several decades has been in Africa. There is a need to introspect on the kind of programmes, including structural adjustment, which much of Africa was made to undergo in the past few decades, and the impact of such externally imposed policies on agriculture and much of the social sector. The report recommends greater investment in rural infrastructure, education and social capital, something that the Left parties in India have been advocating.
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