LABOUR-ASIA: Govts Set Eye on Time-Bound Gender Equality Plan

By Marwaan Macan-Markar Reprint | | Print |

Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK, Aug 31 2001 (IPS) - Asian governments agreed Friday that the region’s female workforce should be guaranteed equality and protection through time-bound goals — be it for equal pay, permanent work or jobs that come with social welfare packages for women.

The International Labour Organisation (ILO) should assist countries in the region to “introduce time-bound programmes for gender equality”, governments said in the final document they issued at the end of the 13th ILO Asian Regional Meeting here.

Specific yardsticks are needed so that Asian governments go beyond making repeated general pledges of equality in work and protection for women, who make up some 40 percent of the work force, the document argued.

The call for a time-bound plan for gender equality in work is a first, and its adoption and implementation would put Asia ahead of Africa and Latin America in this regard.

“Gender mainstreaming should be a priority item on the employment agenda and should be monitored regularly to determine whether concrete progress has been made,” the document added.

“This is a significant step, since time-bound programmes to achieve gender equality have never been applied in other regions. Asia will be the first,” said Jyoti Tuladhar, a specialist on gender and women workers’ issues at the ILO’s South Asia division.

“Seeking equal pay as men is one area they can start with,” she explained.

Women generally get lower pay than men even for the same work. In Japan, women get from 40 to 50 percent of the salary of men, whether they are in part-time or full-time work. In South Korea, women are paid 50 to 80 percent of their male counterparts’ pay.

“We already have a model,” Tuladhar added, referring to the time-bound programmes being used to eradicate the worst forms of child labour in the world since 1999, when they got underway in Tanzania.

“It is a programme that is action-oriented, since it identifies an issue of concern and then works with those involved to meet a target by a specific period,” Tuladhar added.

The push for the gender-sensitive initiative at the ILO regional meeting came from trade union leaders.

“Time-bound programmes for women in the region will serve as an important measure if the lot of the female worker is to improve,” said Halimah Yacob, assistant secretary general of the Singapore National Trades Union Congress.

There is no alternative, she emphasises, not least because women make up a sizeable amount of the workers in export zones, the electronics industry and informal work. In countries from Sri Lanka to the Philippines, women make up to the overwhelming majority of the work force in the garments sector.

“Most of them are in the temporary labour force, which brings with it insecurity and lack of any social welfare packages,” Yacob explained.

Indeed, part-time work, which is growing in various parts of Asia, means a lack of the usual employment benefits, ranging from social security, leaves and bonuses.

Women also make up the majority of the “working poor” in the region, added Ian Chambers, director of the ILO’s Multidisciplinary Advisory Team for East Asia.

ILO defines the “working poor” are those who do not receive adequate pay for the work they do, resulting in their being below the poverty line. “Most of them work at least 40 hours per week, but do not earn enough for them and for their families to live,” Chambers added.

This is prevalent in both South and East Asia. “There is very clear evidence from most parts of the region that women constitute the majority of the group known as ‘the working poor’- the group to which any decent work agenda must pay particular attention,” according to a report by ILO Director-General Juan Somavia that was released for the meeting.

According to the report ‘Decent Work in Asia’, the difficult lot of working women is a consequence of their being discriminated on three fronts — education, training and employment. “Male-female wage differentials are highest at the level of illiterate workers.”

Likewise, “in many countries, more young women than young men are unemployed or inactive,” the report added.

Yet, admits Tuladhar, the ILO’s women’s work specialist, there is room for optimism in light of employment trends across Asia after the 1997 economic meltdown – -which caused economic contractions of up to 13 percent and took its worst toll on working women.

Working women in countries like South Korea, Thailand and Indonesia were among the first to be retrenched, lose social welfare from the state or, if hired, were taken in only as part-time, contractual labour.

But now, Tuladhar said, “more women are being employed in areas previously reserved for men,” particularly in economic spheres such as banking and information technology.

ILO research has also showed that women in Asia are being hired for manual labour that used to be the preserve of men, like welding and working as machine operators.

In her view, the period since the 1997 crisis also forced both governments and business to concede other realities about women workers. Not only has Asian labour become “more feminised”, but women are outpacing their male counterparts in being “flexible workers”, Tuladhar affirms.

“The women have been able to shift from formal jobs to informal jobs, unlike the men, who could not adapt to the economic situation when they lost their formal jobs,” she said. “And they did it to fight for survival, to help their families.”

For Chambers, this shift in hiring patterns stems from women being perceived as employees “prepared to work under the new labour conditions, part-time, on contract”.

“Most women working in the service sector in this region, like the sales staff at stores, in travel agencies, are among the part-time labour force,” he said. “They are also adapting faster to the shift system, another trend here, than what existed earlier, the formal work hours.”

In some economies, he adds, this is reflected in the unemployment patterns. “We are shifting from a model where unskilled women were unemployed to a model were unskilled men are being unemployed.”

Some critics say, however, that part-time work may actually fit the lifestyles of women who have to balance work at home and in the office, but they still in the end do not give the same benefits and security as regular work and are thus of poorer quality.

Chambers concedes that this shift has not translated to job security, since the women work under “precarious conditions.”

For trade union leader Yacob, this does not bode well given recent history — when those hired as part-time labour were the first to be retrenched during the 1997 crisis. “This is where a time-bound gender programme will help,” she pointed out.

In countries like Japan, amid a troubled economy and changing labour patterns, 80 percent of the country’s 10 million part-time workers are women.

“Besides increasing opportunities for women to be educated, receive on-the-job training and be exposed to new levels, like management, governments and business have to recognise job security,” Yacob said.