ILO Report: Young and Female, a Double Handicap to Find a Job

Alarming statistics prove that women are still very far from benefiting from equal conditions of access to the world's labor market.

A new report released Wednesday by the International Labor Organization confirmed the double discrimination that young women face around the world when accessing the labor market.

Despite long-standing efforts to tackle gender inequalities in the workplace, women still have significantly more difficulties in finding a decent job when they finish school, regardless of their education level, the ILO report added.

Entitled “Young and Female: a Double Strike for Women Entering the Workforce,” the authors of the study based their conclusion on a series of surveys of men and women aged 15 through 29 from over 30 developing countries.

Of those surveyed who said they were unemployed, 75 percent were women. The survey also revealed that men earned between one to 36 times more than women across all sectors and occupations.

While the report also pointed to the current economies' failure to produce enough higher skilled jobs, it revealed that women were the main victims as they had 12 percent less chances to obtain the same jobs as their male counterparts. When it came to lower qualified jobs, a gender gap of only 3 percent was found.

The factors contributing to these inequalities, according to the 25 percent of the women surveyed, were family responsibilities, such as pregnancies or early marriages, and duties around the house. The survey also revealed that women are less likely to re-enter the labor market after leaving, regardless of the reason.

“While some progress has been made over time toward gender equality, in particular in access to education, the struggle for true equality in the world of work is still an uphill battle,” concluded the authors.

IN DEPTH: Women Resist

Earlier in January, another investigation by Mailman School found that the wage gap between men and women could explain why women are found to be nearly twice as more prone to suffer depression and anxiety than men in the United States.

“Our results show that some of the gender disparities in depression and anxiety may be due to the effects of structural gender inequality in the workforce and beyond,” said Jonathan Platt, epidemiologist and first author of the paper.

“If women internalize these negative experiences as individual-level issues, rather than the result of structural discrimination, they may be at increased risk for depression and anxiety disorders,” he added.

source:::http://www.telesurtv.net

Among the total surveyed who did not have a job, three quarters of them were women. | Photo: Reuters

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