WUNRN
PassBlue: http://passblue.com/2015/03/29/the-many-global-currents-undermining-gender-equality/
The Many Global Currents
Undermining Gender Equality – Wage Gaps +
The pay gap remains a huge obstacle to gender
equality. Here, a cook in a hotel restaurant in Luang Prabang, Laos. ADRI
BERGES/ILO
By Florencia
Giordano - March 29, 2015
How much does the economic environment of a
country generate inequalities for women? A new report on wage gaps says that
disparities are only partly explained by differences in experience, education
and/or occupation, proving there is much more work to be done before the world
offers both genders equal pay for equal work.
The report, produced by the United Nations’
International Labor Organization, was shared at an all-day conference held on
the margins recently of this year’s meeting of the Commission on the Status of
Women at UN headquarters.
Carrying out anti-discriminatory policies is
essential to making progress toward greater social justice, said Shauna Olney,
the director of gender, equality and diversity at the International Labor
Organization. Olney was one of 22 panelists at the conference, hosted by UN
Women and Columbia University and focused on the myriad challenges — from
low-paid care work by migrants to reproductive surrogacy — posed by
globalization on achieving gender equality. More than 100 participants from UN
agencies, civil society and academia participated in the event.
“Poor women are the most high-potential
people in the face of the earth,” and we must find ways to “shift the market”
to fit them, said Patricia Morris, president of Women Thrive Worldwide and a
panelist. Inclusiveness is essential, she added, which can be done by engaging
with women’s collectives and carrying out local solutions so women can have an
influence in restructuring sustainable economic development.
Employment is a powerful tool to improving
the status of women, but low wages, barriers to unionize and unsafe working
environments, including sexual harassment and gender-based violence, can limit
its impacts. It is of upmost importance that women have jobs with dignity, said
Kalpona Akter, executive director of the Bangladesh Center for Worker
Solidarity, adding: “Creating jobs does not mean that you gave us empowerment.
We want these jobs with dignity. When we get dignity, I will consider that
women’s empowerment.”
Crucial to women’s ability to gain dignified
employment is their ability to organize, so Rosa Pavanelli, the
secretary-general of Public Services International, a global union federation,
said she was surprised to see that “organized work and workers are not
considered at all in the process of the UN’s CSW” [Commission on the Status of
Women].
Moreover, women are the first to be affected
by austerity measures instituted in economic crises, which often result in an
even more deregulated financial system and labor market, shifting power from
governments to corporations. These conditions make women’s ability to organize
paramount to counterbalance these power shifts.
Migration is another important factor
affecting women and labor. Most international migration results from vulnerable
economic conditions, which tend to hurt women disproportionately. Migration
increasingly takes place through irregular channels, and migrants fall victim
to human trafficking, exploitation and forced labor. Women’s work as migrants
often occurs in informal, unregulated spaces, such as the kafala system. This
system forces foreign workers to be sponsored by an employer to legally work in
a country, rendering them vulnerable to exploitation.
Bianca Pomeranzi, the senior adviser for
gender and development at the Italian foreign ministry and a member of the UN’s
Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), said that
although women made up roughly half of migrants, they are not often taken into
consideration by international agencies because the women provide “care” work
that is devalued and not always accounted for in the labor force.
Migrant domestic workers are often excluded
from labor laws and subject to low wages, long working hours and lack of access
to social protection, in addition to being subjected to sexual abuse and
physical harassment.
Elizabeth Tang, the international coordinator
for the International Domestic Workers Federation, said that these conditions
often result from the involvement of private recruiters, which make migrant
domestic workers “commodities for higher profit.”
In addition, women’s migration has resulted
in what Sonya Michel, a professor of history at the University of Maryland,
described as “not just a brain drain but also a care drain.”
The motherhood penalty, part of the “care”
work being done disproportionately by women worldwide, extends beyond pay gaps
and the development of care chains into increasingly complicated territory.
As demand for reproductive surrogacy rises,
for example, women can risk being treated as “machines for reproduction,” said
Yasmine Ergas, the director of the Gender and Public Policy Specialization at
Columbia. Not only does reproductive surrogacy lead to the commodification of
women’s bodies, but it can also render an undefined legal status on those who
bear children through surrogacy (who, under current regulatory frameworks, are
neither mothers nor workers) and thus recognizing their rights becomes
challenging.
Violence across borders is another obstacle
to women’s equality. As Dale Buscher, the senior director for programs at the
Women’s Refugee Commission, said, “We know that gender-based violence increases
in every single conflict, often exponentially.”
Humanitarians must help to prevent
gender-based violence, including the provision of security and physical
protection as well as economic and social opportunities. Women and migrant
women who are trapped in conflict situations are extremely vulnerable to
violence, so interventions in crises must integrate a gender perspective.
Campaigning to create alternative models of masculinity,
involving women leaders in peace negotiations and including women’s
perspectives and survival strategies into account can help mitigate such
violence.