Amelita King Dejardin: Gender perspective must be taken into consideration in the battle to stabilize social stability during current economic meltdown
Chim
Economic meltdown
Written by amelita king dejardin
Friday, 06 March 2009
The financial crisis that continues to tighten its grip on global
markets has a hitherto unacknowledged gender bias.
Comment
Amelita King Dejardin
THE current economic crisis is unravelling before us faster than even
the most pessimistic of experts predicted just a few months ago.
The effects are already trickling down to ordinary working people. In
the Asia Pacific region, the International Labour Organisation has
projected that as many as 27 million more people could become
unemployed this year. Some 140 million others in the region's
developing economies could be forced into extreme poverty.
The numbers are staggering and, without a doubt, everyone will be
touched by this crisis. Yet what is so far lacking from many of the
debates on how countries should respond is a realization that this
crisis has a gender bias. Here in Asia, working women will be affected
more severely, and differently, from their male counterparts.
For policymakers, failure to take into account this gender dimension,
especially at the lower end of the socioeconomic scale, could be a
critical miscalculation, worsening the working and living conditions
of millions, deepening economic and social inequalities, and wiping
out a generation of hard-won gains in pay equity and workplace
equality.
Why are women affected differently? One reason is that women workers
are concentrated in labour-intensive export industries that feed into
global supply chains. In contrast, male workers tend to be
distributed across a wider range of economic sectors. Women are also
concentrated in the lower levels of these global supply chains, in
casual, temporary, sub-contracted and informal employment, where work
is insecure, wages low, working conditions poor and workers least
likely to be protected by conventional social insurance systems. It
follows that shrinking global demand for clothes, textiles and
electronics (as well as for related business services like hotels and
restaurants) means that women will be the first to lose their jobs.
Asia's experience during the 1997 economic crisis provides evidence to
back this projection. In Thailand, 95 percent of those laid off from
the garment sector were women - in the toys sector it was 88 percent.
In Korea, 86 percent of those who lost their financial services and
banking jobs were female.
The consequence of losing a job also affects women differently, and
more severely. Research shows that the poorer the family, the more
important the woman's earnings are to the family's subsistence,
children's health and education. And because women workers in
Thailand, the Philippines and Vietnam - among other countries - are
concentrated in lower-paid jobs they tend to save less; so a small pay
cut or price rise can severely damage them and their dependents.
The region's experience in 1997 supports this concern; a survey in the
Philippines found that when a male worker lost his job, 65 percent of
households reported a fall in income, but when a woman worker was
retrenched, 94 percent of households had less money.
Poorer households also rely more on unpaid care work (for children,
the elderly or sick family members), which is almost always provided
by women. So in tough times, women tend to be stretched more between
their conflicting responsibilities.
Since the 1990s, the governments of many Asian countries have
strengthened their social protection schemes. This is a welcome move
since a social floor is a vital tool in fighting poverty (and
designing a social floor that meets women's needs is one of the themes
of the current ILO Global Gender Campaign). However, in many countries
women do not get equal access to social protection.
In some cases, this is because of the nonstandard, low-wage and
informal economy jobs they have, which are less likely to come with
such social benefits. In others, policymakers assume women can rely
on men, or because benefits are directly linked to keeping your job -
for example, most maternity protection systems in Asia are paid solely
by employers.
Of course, this is not a simple black-and-white issue. In some areas
or sectors, men will bear the brunt. For example, demand for female
workers could rise as regular workers are replaced by casuals. Among
migrant workers in developed economies, better-educated, skilled women
who work as nurses, doctors or in other specialist health care jobs,
or as domestic workers, are less likely to be laid off than their male
migrant worker counterparts - who are mostly in construction,
manufacturing and agriculture.
It is therefore critical that when governments, employers and workers
organizations sit down to discuss policies to combat the social and
economic effects of the crisis, they do so from the perspective of
women as well as men.
For example, public infrastructure and investment programs are common
components of national crisis-response packages. However, the bulk of
jobs created by these programs could easily go to men because
construction, engineering and technical jobs are dominated by and seen
as more suitable for men. This is what we saw in 1997.
Not only should efforts be made to ensure that these jobs are open to
women, but the concept of what are public works should be expanded to
incorporate social services, health care, education, child and youth
development.
When it comes to the social aspect of policy responses, basic health
care, maternity, and education must be included.
Finally, special attention is needed to ensure that women's own views
and opinions are heard. In 1997, women were not properly included in
the social dialogue because - even in businesses that employed mostly
women - the leadership of workers and employers organisations was
dominated by men.
This week brings International Women's Day (Sunday), a regular and
natural opportunity to focus on the situation of women in this region.
We should mark the day with a commitment not to repeat the mistakes of
1997 by ensuring that crisis-response measures reach all those who
need help, equally.
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Amelita King Dejardin is a senior technical
adviser in the Police Integration and Statistics
Department of the International Labour Organisation.