Slow Progress for Women

The International Labor Organization (ILO) on Wednesday published its March 2007 brief, "Global Employment Trends for Women." The report coincides with International Women's Day on Thursday, an annual day of events to celebrate and evaluate advances for women in society.

The report says more women are employed than ever before, with 1.2 billion women among the world's 2.9 billion workers in 2006 -- 100 million more than 10 years ago. This includes women who are in work or actively looking for a job.

But the report also notes that "this overall figure only tells part of the story." Despite the increase in employed women, which the ILO rates positively, the female share of total employment remains virtually unchanged at 40 percent compared to 1996.

Many regions are also registering declines in the share of working-age women. Although this "partially reflects greater participation of young women in education," the finding mostly suggests that although female employment is keeping up with the overall enlargement of the work force, not much has changed in terms of relative female parity.

"Despite some progress," ILO Director General Juan Somavia said that "far too many women are still stuck in the lowest paying jobs, often in the informal economy with insufficient legal protection, little or no social protection and a high degree of insecurity."

And there is another problem: Although more women are willing and able to work these days, many more are having trouble actually finding a job. The ILO has documented a higher rate of unemployment for women than for men: 6.6 percent and 6.1 percent, respectively.

Same challenges as ever

Taken as a whole, the ILO report describes the same problems that have been the bane of female emancipation for decades. Women are still more likely to work in "low productivity jobs" in agriculture and services -- cleaning toilets or harvesting crops, for example -- still get less money than men for the same job, and are still less educated than their male counterparts.

For these reasons, and because women are believed to make up 60 percent of the world's working poor -- people who earn less than a dollar a day -- the report speaks of a "process of feminization of poverty," which is bound to be passed on to the next generation if policymakers do not intervene with social and economic policies tailored to the "specific needs" of women.

Meanwhile, the ILO is holding a series of special events at its headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, on Thursday to commemorate the 30th anniversary of International Women's Day, which was created by the United Nations in 1977.

The ILO has invited special guests Anousheh Ansari and Rabiatu Serah Diallo to a round-table discussion on how they "broke the boundaries of change," according to a press release. Ansari made a big splash as the first woman private space explorer after she spent eight days aboard the International Space Station. And Diallo has been an active campaigner for workers' rights in Guinea since her early youth.