Businesses leading the way

 Progressive businesses understand that helping to dismantle barriers to women goes hand in hand with sustainable business and economic returns. Some companies are thus taking more transformational approaches that go beyond CSR. They are analysing and changing their core business structure and practices, whether by providing their employees with access to childcare, to family friendly benefits, or safe transport...

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Women’s economic inequality is bad for business

Businesses need to play their part for women’s economic equality and respect international standards such as the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, as well as laws in many countries that aim to secure gender equality and rights in the workplace. Yet dividends for businesses that promote women’s economic equality are significant – beyond the legal or reputational risks of failing to respect...

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Devaluing women’s work has costs for the economy

 An economy that is permanently subsidised by the exploitation of women’s work is dysfunctional and can only bend so far before it breaks. Relying on women’s unpaid care work and limiting their access to paid employment is costly, unsustainable and makes no economic sense. According to the ILO, globally an additional US$1.6 trillion in output could be generated by reducing the gaps in employment between...

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The cost of inequality in women’s work

Women: bearing the brunt  ActionAid has calculated that US$9 trillion26 is the cost that women in developing countries bear each year due to unequal wages and the fact that women have less access than men to paid jobs (see methodological annex for details).  The staggering amount of US$9 trillion is equal to more than the GDP of Britain, France and Germany combined. This huge disparity is...

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The missing women of the workforce

Scandalously, despite the enormous international effort that has gone into getting girls into school, women continue to face discrimination in the labour market, which seriously affects their opportunities, limits their life options and economic potential. Since 1990, women’s participation in the labour market globally has stagnated at around 50%.While the global average masks regional and country differences...

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Double standards: women paid little and always less than men

Entering employment does not automatically lead to empowerment and equality for women. Many women and men, especially in developing countries simply do not earn a living wage – in other words, enough to have a decent standard of living and meet their own and their families’ basic needs.20 What’s more, when women are paid for a job, they earn on average between 10% to 30% less than men for work of equal...

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The Cost of Inequality in Women’s Work

From the 1% vs the 99% of the Occupy movement and Oxfam; to the World Bank’s call to focus on the trajectory of the income of the bottom 40%; or the increasingly touted Palma ratio, debates on inequality are back. And yet, there is a group systematically omitted within such debates: women – and in particular women in poor countries. All over the world, women’s work contributes to growth, sustainable...

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The evidence is clear: equality for women means progress for all

Today, hundreds of millions of women will wake up to face yet another day of backbreaking work for little or no reward. Although their labour – in and outside the home – is vital to the global economy, to sustainable development, and for the wellbeing of society at large, it is undervalued and for the most part invisible.  While public outrage grows at the fact that the richest 1% of the world’s...

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The worst jobs are women’s jobs

Working men and women in developing countries face a struggle for daily survival, often earning poverty wages in desperate circumstances. The dream of decent work for all is still a distant one. Yet – despite their lower rates of participation in the labour force overall – women make up roughly 60% of the world’s working poor and are subject to highly exploitative forms of work in both the formal and informal...

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Support the campaign for legalisation of abortion in Chile

Chile is one of the few countries in the world that does not permit abortion under any circumstances. Women who have been raped, who have an unviable pregnancy, or whose health or life at risk, cannot decide to undergo an abortion. This total prohibition was one of the last acts in office of Pinochet in 1989.  Despite the prohibition, recent estimations placed the number of clandestine abortion...

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Calls on governments, international institutions and businesses

Today, hundreds of millions of women will collect firewood and water for their families, cook and clean, take care of the elderly, the young and the sick; all the while scratching a living from the poorest paid and most precarious jobs. Women’s labour – in and outside the home – is vital to sustainable development, and for the wellbeing of society. Without the subsidy it provides, the world economy would...

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What is Female Genital Mutilation (FGM)?

Know the Facts: What is Female Genital Mutilation (FGM)? WHAT? FGM is a human rights violation, torture and an extreme form of violence and discrimination against girls and women. It is most often carried out on girls between infancy  and age 15, though adult women are occasionally subjected to the procedure. FGM has no health benefits, only harm. FGM involves removing and damaging healthy and normal...

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Women and the Right to Food for All

Under human rights law, the States have an obligation to respect existing access to adequate food. States should be mindful that no policy or measure should create obstacles for farmers, especially to women farmers, to maintain their seed systems. This would deprive them of their means of livelihood.13 States have an obligation to protect the right to food and therefore need to regulate the activities of...

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TRANSFORMATIVE CHANGE AND POWER

The achievement of women’s full rights is a complex socio- economic and political process. It demands diverse, positive, and sustained changes in policy, practices, resource allocation, attitudes, beliefs, and power relationships. Together these changes have the potential to lead to transformed societies where women and other marginalized groups can fully achieve their rights.  Transformative change...

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