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  • Title: Women swell ranks of working poor.
    Author: International Labour Office ILO.
    Journal: World Work; 1996; (17):4-7. PubMed ID: 12320523.
    Abstract:
    Despite expanded global female employment (45% of women aged 15-64 years are economically active), women still comprise 70% of the world's 1 billion people living in poverty. Moreover, women's economic activities remain largely confined to low-wage, low-productivity forms of employment. A report by the International Labor Organization (ILO), prepared as a follow-up to the Fourth World Conference on Women and the World Summit for Social Development, identified discrimination in education as a central cause of female poverty and underemployment. Each additional year of schooling is estimated to increase a woman's earnings by 15%, compared to 11% for a man. At the workplace, women face inequalities in terms of hiring and promotion standards, access to training and retraining, access to credit, equal pay for equal work, and participation in economic decision making. In addition, even women in higher-level jobs in developing countries spend 31-42 hours per week in unpaid domestic activities. The ILO has concluded that increasing employment opportunities for women is not a sufficient goal. Required are actions to improve the terms and conditions of such employment, including equal pay for work of equal value, improved occupational safety and health, enhanced security in informal or atypical forms of work, guarantees of freedom of association and the right to organize and bargain collectively, and appropriate maternity protection and child care provisions. Finally, taxation and social welfare policies must be rewritten to accommodate the reality that women are no longer the dependent or secondary earner in families.
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