Actions Needed To Reduce The Gap Between Employment Rates For Women And Men

Nowadays women’s participation rate in global labour force is close to 49%, while it is 75% for men. That’s a difference of 26 percentage points, in some regions this gap can increase 50 percentage points or more. If the woman wants to work she would have a harder time finding a job than man. Women who live in Northern Africa and the Arab States, where unemployment rates for women exceed 16%, are more likely to face the problems (1). But what are the main obstacles for women for getting paid employment and How should we able to eliminate those impediments? So if you want your daughters’ labour force participation to be as same as your sons. EDUCATE THEM! Every day, girls encounter barriers to study, which derived from poverty, cultural norms and practices, poor infrastructure, violence, and fragility.

According to UNESCO estimates, 130 million girls between the age of 6 and 17 are out of school and 15 million girls of primary-school age—half of them in sub-Saharan Africa— will never enter a classroom (2). Cultural bias and lack of safety shouldn’t be the basic barriers for investing in girls’ long-term education. If a girl stays in school longer it indicates that in the future she would be able to have a smaller but healthier family, be a significant part of industry and earn a higher wage. She would possibly marry later, educate her own children and it will conclude with literacy of one generation (3). Educating your daughters, you will help them to gain life skills-thinking critically, empathizing and relying on themselves. You will also give to them a chance to find out their own strength, advocate for themselves, and construct a new and distinct path.

DON’T FORCE THEM TO MARRY IN THEIR CHILDHOOD

These disastrous percentages are the proofs of unhappy, uneducated, poor women’s forced marriages before their 18 years old. It is based on Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys (MICS), Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) and other national surveys, and refers to the most recent year available during the period 2010-2016. (4)Basically, child marriage is embedded in gender inequality and in those families girls are not treated as the same as boys, they are not even their parents’ daughters, they’re seen as burdens on their family. Therefore, forcing your daughter to get married at her young age, you will can ease economic hardship by throwing this ‘burden’ to her husband. Children are not brides! Daughters’ sexuality and virginity is not the basis of the family honour. So, child marriage would never be able to keep your family honour safe and clean. The problem, which driven by patriarchal values will swap the women’s possible bright future to the inevitable darkness and is one of the considerable reasons of obstructing women’s prospective career chances. This complex issue limits girls’ and women’s own possibilities for growth, stability and transformation. There is no way the woman, deprived of her fundamental rights to health, education and safety, can be successful in her future carrier. As a result, child marriage, causing women to feel disempowered, vulnerable, unsuccessful, is an impediment to global development as well.

TREAT THEM EQUALLY

In USA, during the past several decades, one of the main changes, orchestras have started to do when they hire musicians, is to eliminate bias against women. In the late of 1970, the top five orchestras in the U. S. having fewer than 5% women, can be shown as a proof of gender biased composition of orchestras. From 1980s these top orchestras started to have only 10% female musicians. But by 1997 the percentage of women in orchestras is more than 25 and today some of them are well into the 30s. But what is the source of this change? Did the women start to be interested in music more than before, or there is or have the orchestras focused on work that appeals to females? In the 1970s and 1980s, orchestras began using blind auditions, which candidates played on a stage behind a screen, that members of jury could not see them. In a few ensembles, this method was used just for the preliminary selection while others used it till the end, which hiring decision was made. Even when the screen was only used for the first round, it had a major impact; researchers determined that this step alone made it 50% more likely that a woman would progress to the finals. And the screen had also been demonstrated to be the source of a surge in the quantity of women being offered positions.

Coincidentally, even a screen doesn't always yield a gender blind event. Screens keep juries from seeing the candidates move into position, but the telltale sounds of a woman's shoes allegedly influenced some jury members such that the musicians were told take off their footwear before coming onto the stage. (5)So women can be qualified musicians, electricians, pilots, surgeons, bus drivers, IT specialists and etc. The only obstruction can hinder their success in career life is STIGMA! If you want the women to have a paid job outside the home, DON’T HIRE THEM INSIDE THE HOME! Women shouldn’t be in charge of doing chores, household chores should be split equally for both men and women. So, women shouldn’t be forced to prefer work in paid jobs or care for their families. Unlike the 30 or 40 years ago, today women, being attached to the labour market, work longer hours outside the home. This fact is true even during the childbearing years. The possibility of working women to halve the time she devotes to household chores and her husband to get involved in household duties (and market work) more than he did before, can be an excuse for preventing woman from achieving her career goals.

The gap between men and women's wages is also influential in house chores and eliminating the gender gap in wages would lead to married women doing much less housework. The "Wages and Family Time Allocation” research by Alexandros Theloudis revealed that married people's time allocations have been affected by the convergence between men and women's wages over the last decades. He claims that the convergence has a direct financial influence on family planning (by increasing women's monetary reward for market work) as well as has an indirect impact on the way that decisions between men and women are made in the household: spouses may differ in the extent to which they can arrange the household decisions to their tastes, and the gender wage gap may affect the bargaining power they have to do so. (6)Women are not men’s servants, cleaning, washing, cooking are not their duties! Don’t harass them! Sexual harassment in a work place which cause a woman feel offended, humiliated or intimidated, is unwelcome sexual behavior. Physical, verbal or written harassment is not consensual interaction, flirtation or friendship and not a behavior that is mutually agreed upon. (7)Women in nearly every industry have come forward with stories about sexual harassment. Forty percent of American women say they have experienced unwanted sexual attention or coercion at work.

Only few of these damaged women come forward, and even fewer of those who do keep their jobs. As one study baldly states, “Sexual harassment has been identified as one of the most damaging and ubiquitous barriers to career success and satisfaction for women. ”(8)Sexual assault and harassment take on their jobs, their career paths, and their psyches — including their ambitions and dreams. It is one of the main reason can change the course of their professional lives forever. They are vulnerable, even scared of reporting to someone. Even after some of them can courageously report the person, it is the case that no official action would be taken. Because of that a good relationship with their colleagues and employers is critical most of the injured females were obliged to leave the industry. Sexual harassment can have the longevity detrimental results for mental and physical health, including anger and self-doubt, which likely influence goals about future employment experiences. It is not surprising that sexual harassment with depressive symptoms directly affects immediate work outcomes, like reduced job satisfaction. (9)