The
World Bank’s World Development Report 2012: Gender Equality and Development
shows that gender gaps have shrunk over the past quarter century.
The study, released on Sept 19, reports that
women now represent 40% of the global labour force, 43% of the world’s
agricultural labour force and more than half the world’s university students.
In education enrolment, gaps have closed in
almost all countries for primary education and in secondary education, these
gaps are closing rapidly and have even reversed especially in Latin America and
East Asia. In 40 of the developing countries, girls outnumber boys in secondary
schools and in as many as 60 countries, there are more women than men in
universities.
Gender gaps have also closed rapidly in
Malaysia. According to the Statistics Department labour force survey report for
the second quarter of this year, women make up 47.6% of the country’s total
labour force. Nearly all (97.3%) of the females enrolled in primary school
reached the last grade last year compared with 97.1% of the males enrolled. In
Malaysia, the ratio of female to male university graduates is at 60:40.
As a result of the rise in the number of women
graduates, the World Bank also found that women’s participation in paid work
has risen with over half a billion women joining the world’s labour force over
the last 30 years. It said gender equality is a core development objective as
greater gender equality can enhance productivity, improve development outcomes
for the next generation and make institutions more representative.
The report, however, shows that gender
disparities still remain in many areas. Women tend to earn less than men
globally and are more likely than men to work as unpaid family labourers or in
an informal sector. Women farmers, for example, tend to farm smaller plots and
less profitable crops than men and women entrepreneurs operate in smaller
firms, and again, in less profitable sectors. In most countries, women
participate less in formal politics than men and are under represented in the
upper echelons.
“We need to achieve gender equality. Over the
past five years, the World Bank group has provided US$65 billion to support
girls’ education, women’s health, and women’s access to credit, land,
agricultural services, jobs, and infrastructure. This has been important work,
but it has not been enough or central enough to what we do. Going forward, the
World Bank Group will mainstream our gender work and find other ways to move
the agenda forward to capture the full potential of half the world’s
population,” said World Bank group president Robert Zoellick.
In Malaysia, the 2010 statistics show that
women have a 39.3% share in wage employment. The government aims for women to
have a 50% share in the wage employment by 2015. Women representation in
politics in Malaysia also remains low at only 10.4%, over 40% lower than the
target of 50% to be reached by 2015.
According to the World Bank report, women also
have lower earnings and productivity. The report argues that gender differences
in labour productivity and earnings are primarily the result of differences in
the economic activities of men and women.
“Women all over the world appear to be
concentrated in low-productivity jobs. They work in small farms and run small
firms. They are over-represented among unpaid family workers and in the
informal sector. And they rarely rise to positions of power in the labour
market,” states the report.
It said the reason for this is gender
segregation in access to economic opportunities. The report cites as an example
that women are more likely than men to work in jobs that offer flexible working
arrangements so they can combine work with household responsibilities.
Part-time jobs often pay lower hourly wages. This in turn lowers the incentive
for women to participate in the labour market.
The report stated that breaking out of this
gender segregation requires interventions that lift time constraints and
increase women’s access to productive inputs and also interventions to correct
market and institutional failures.
According to the report, women are more likely
than men to work in agriculture (37% of all employed women, against 33% of all
employed men) and in services (47% of all employed women, against 40% of all
employed men). The opposite is true for manufacturing.
Women also are overrepresented among unpaid
and wage workers and in the informal sector. Women account for about 40% of the
total global workforce, but 58% of all unpaid work, 44% of wage employment, and
50% of informal employment
The same goes for women entrepreneurs. The
large majority of micro, small and medium enterprises are run by women and the
percentage of female ownership declines with the firm size. Female- headed
enterprises are also more likely than male-headed enterprises to be home-based.
The report also found that women represent
more than 50% of employment in communal services such as public administration,
education, health and other social services. They also represent more than 40%
of employment in the retail and restaurant sectors and among agricultural
workers. Women entrepreneurs also tend to be heavily concentrated in the
service sector and in businesses that conform to more female roles such as
beauty parlours.
Ana Revenga, co-director of World Development
Report 2012, said “focused domestic public policies remain the key to bringing
about gender equality and to be effective these policies will need to address
the root causes of gender gaps. For other gaps, as with unequal access to
economic opportunities, policies will need to tackle multiple constraints, in
markets and institutions, that keep women trapped in low-productivity and
low-earning jobs.”
In Malaysia, however, the recent drive for
fulfilling the 30% of women at decision-making levels may be seen as a move of
the government to move women from low-earning and low-productive jobs to higher
earning ones. If companies continue to offer opportunities to a new and larger
pool of women and continue to groom younger ones, the gender segregation in
economic opportunities will close.
Raina Ng
The Edge Financial Daily
Business & Investment Opportunities
YourVietnamExpert is a division of Saigon Business Corporation Pte Ltd, Incorporated in Singapore since 1994. As Your Business Companion, we propose a range of services in Consulting, Investment and Management, focusing three main economic sectors: International PR; Healthcare & Wellness;and Tourism & Hospitality. We also propose Higher Education, as a bridge between educational structures and industries, by supporting international programs. Sign up with twitter to get news updates with @SaigonBusinessC. Thanks.
No comments:
Post a Comment