Deborah France Massin, Director, Bureau for Employers’ Activities – ILO

Earlier this year, the ILO Bureau for Employers’ Activities launched its report on Women in Business and Management: Gaining Momentum.

Its main messages are perhaps well known and hopefully accepted: women’s presence in the labour market is increasingly significant for economic growth and development and women represent an incredible talent pool which should not be ignored.

The good news is that a greater percentage of women earn their own income than in the past and work in a broader range of occupations.

Women are swelling the ranks of lower and middle managers in many regions, in some cases occupying more than 50% of all jobs. More and more, they’re also joining the ranks of entrepreneurs and are running their own businesses. Around 30% of businesses are now run by women.

Download the report: Women in Business and Management: Gaining Momentum

However, even though there are more women leaders in business, statistically speaking the proportion of women CEOs and board members is still much lower than their participation in the labour market overall and in management generally. It’s especially low at big companies. Just 5 per cent of publicly traded firms have a woman at the helm.

Our report showed that while the glass ceiling may be cracked, it’s still far from broken.

Key takeaways

One of the tangible objectives of the report is to provide a solid research background to help deepen our knowledge about the good practices, resources, organisational structures and networks already in place in the business community.

A recent example is a conference held last month entitled “Reflecting Global Change for Women in Business and Management”.

Held in collaboration with the International Finance Corporation and the Confederation of British Industry at its headquarters in London, the meeting was a milestone. For the first time, it brought constituents from businesses and their representative organisations together with experts and practitioners from around the world to discuss the challenges and critical steps to advancing women in leadership positions and levelling the playing field for women and men.

It’s generally recognised that some of the main obstacles holding women back are gender stereotypes, corporate cultures, difficulties in reconciling work and family responsibilities as well as more subtle forms of gender biases which sometimes exist in educational systems and the workplace.

At the London conference many of these issues were discussed in a dynamic and open way. We tackled questions like: why after so many decades have women not broken through the glass ceiling in significant numbers? Do employers tend to hire people that are similar to themselves?

What role does gender stereotyping play? What measures work (or don’t) to overcome institutional barriers blocking women’s access to top positions in companies? How can companies have more gender balance in their decision-making structures? How can corporate cultures be changed to be more inclusive of women?

The panellists and speakers – who included senior managers from Deutsche Post DHL, Ernst and Young, IBM Korea, McKinsey and Company, Sodexo, Shell, Silicon Manufacturing Company, Unilever and Business Unity South Africa, as well as a former mayor of London – had interesting stories to tell. The graphics “scribed” during the panel sessions give you a flavour of the discussions.

What the companies there all had in common is that they are committed to promoting women in their ranks, and have taken important steps to achieve this.

An illustrator at the meeting captured some of the key themes from the discussions in this graphic, called a “scribe”. Explore the full-size image (8MB)

The way forward

So what’s next? Going forward, we want to move beyond meetings and harness our employer constituents’ wealth of knowledge to provide a springboard for renewed ILO action.

At a practical level, we will build on the inputs to the report and the London conference to bring together more examples of good practices which can be used by national employer organizations and their member companies seeking to make progress.

We will also continue working with national employer and business organisations which have a key role to play in creating greater awareness among their company members about the talent and resources women can bring to the workforce, especially at senior decision-making levels.

For example, a follow up to London will be hosted by the Singapore Employers’ Federation in July. We will also look at initiatives business-representative organisations have taken to increase the percentage of women in their decision making structures.

All this work will go a long way to enhancing our own knowledge of business priorities in order to make a real contribution to the ILO’s Centenary Women at Work initiative.

Shauna Olney is Chief of the Gender, Equality and Diversity Branch of the ILO

In 1995, a group of ILO staff watched in awe as the  World Conference on Women adopted a new roadmap for achieving gender equality and women’s empowerment in the years to come. This was the fourth global women’s conference in 20 years, following Mexico City in 1975, Copenhagen in 1980 and Nairobi in 1985. The roadmap called for actions to be completed five, 10, 20 years down the road.

At one point, a colleague, whose career had spanned those years turned to me and said, “why do we have to wait another 20 years?”

Twenty years on, I find myself asking the same question. It’s certainly time to assess what we’ve achieved, what needs to be done and how much longer we will have to wait.

Granted, there has been progress, but it is often mixed.

I have been struck over the years by the increase in the number of national gender equality policies, and the adoption of more innovative legislation addressing gender, along with other types of discrimination. The number of countries ratifying the ILO Conventions on equal pay and non-discrimination has also increased by about 50 per cent since 1995. But implementation remains a real concern.

In 2015, International Women’s Day will highlight the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action , a historic roadmap that sets the agenda for realizing women’s rights. While there have been many achievements since then, many gaps remain. Learn more.

Access to maternity protection has improved dramatically. Today, just over half the countries in the world offer 14 weeks or more of maternity leave, compared to 38 per cent 20 years ago. Yet globally, more than 800 million women, or 41 per cent, are being left behind. Meanwhile, the number of countries providing some form of paternity leave and benefits has doubled.

In business, the glass ceilings and walls are cracking, but have not been broken yet. Women CEOs today head more than 20 Fortune 500 companies. That’s up from zero in 1995, but still only 5 per cent of the total. More women sit on corporate boards, but hold less than 20 per cent of seats. And more women own and manage businesses, but only 30 per cent of the world total.

The gender pay gap still exists and is hardly shrinking. On average, women still earn 23 per cent less than men worldwide. Even among women, there’s a motherhood pay gap, with mothers earning less than women without children.

One of the figures we have is an estimate that, at the current rate of change, there won’t be pay equity between women and men for another 70 or more years.

Only half the world’s working age women are in the labour market, compared to 77 per cent of working age men, percentages largely unchanged from 20 years ago. For young women under 25, the situation is grim: fewer young women are working today than in 1995.

So what is the upshot of all this? In view of the progress that’s been made, it’s time to change the conversation.

The next 20 years cannot be more of the same. And it won’t be. Momentum is building, economically, politically and socially to break down the barriers to gender equality.

For example, the upcoming 59^th session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women in New York reports that a record 166 countries have reviewed the status of women prior to the session. An unprecedented number of trade unionists, NGOs and participants have registered and hundreds of side events are planned by governments and interested organizations.

At the ILO, we are also recognizing the importance of women at work in the centenary initiatives on Women at Work and the Future of Work. We are saying that women at work are vital to realizing the proposed Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that will be launched this year.

Growing inequalities, the need to accelerate progress on gender equality, and the overwhelming need for decent jobs have dominated the global consultations on the SDGs. The ILO’s mandate is at the very centre of delivering on the transformative agenda that is so anticipated.  It’s now time to deliver on the promise of Beijing, Nairobi, Copenhagen and Mexico City to ensure women and men have equal opportunities in the workplace and beyond.

One of the figures we have is an estimate that, at the current rate of change, there won’t be pay equity between women and men for another 70 or more years. Seventy years? That’s why my colleague’s question in 1995 about not wanting to wait is as relevant today as it was then.

Forty years, thousands of meetings and millions of words on, I think we can safely say that women have waited long enough. Imagine a world where gender equality, not inequality, is the norm. Now we need to make it happen.

Guy Ryder,
Director-General of the International Labour Organization

Note: This entry was originally posted on The CNN Freedom Project blog 

Across the planet, about one in every seven of us lives in extreme poverty, having to survive on less than $1.25 a day. Every day, they and the millions more living just above the poverty line struggle to have enough to eat, and dream of a better life and of earning enough to provide for their families.

Geeta Devi was one of these people.

The 32 year-old mother of two from Nepal had been struggling to support her children and, like millions before her, made the difficult decision to leave her family behind in search of better work. Geeta, whose real name is being withheld to protect her safety, left her home believing she had secured a job through a local recruitment agency to work in a hospital in Lebanon.

When she arrived in Beirut, the man who collected her at the airport told her that she would actually be employed as a domestic worker in his house.

Geeta had used her meager savings to travel abroad and now had no money to fly home. And so she was forced to accept the job. What followed was an all too familiar story of exploitation – no wages, physical and psychological abuse, loss of contact with family and restriction of movement.

The sad thing is that Geeta’s case is not an exception. It is a situation faced by millions of women and girls from southern Asia who migrate with hope, only to find themselves far from home, behind closed household or factory doors in often horrific conditions.

Across the world, there are 21 million forced laborers, and more than half of them are women and girls. They are trapped in work under unimaginable conditions, into which they were coerced or deceived and from which they cannot escape.

The emotional and physical impact on the individuals is terrible. And there is an economic dimension too: we estimate that victims of forced labor are being denied at least $21 billion of income a year and this is money that could be lifting families and entire communities out of poverty.

I find it unacceptable that such slavery-like conditions can exist anywhere in the world today.

There are several factors involved, from deception by unscrupulous labor recruiters to exploitation at the hands of employers in the destination region or country. Migrant domestic workers are particularly vulnerable because they are highly dependent on their employers, and because private homes are often excluded from labor market regulations and labor inspection.

But with political will and innovative, comprehensive solutions, we can tackle modern-day slavery. For starters, we need strict punishment of those who benefit from exploitation. We also need strong preventive measures.

Women at risk of exploitation need educational support and training on rights and skills, to improve their ability to access or create local employment opportunities, or allow them to choose to migrate as well-informed, skilled workers with higher income-earning potential.

But even well-prepared migration can go wrong, if laws and policies fail to protect workers’ rights.

That’s why we also need to strengthen labor legislation with gender-sensitive laws and policies and agreements between countries which protect the rights of migrant workers, especially women.

One important measure is to extend the coverage of labor law to domestic workers, a measure that has already been taken by some countries such as Jordan.

The ILO’s Domestic Worker Convention No. 189 will enter into force in September this year. It has already created a new momentum for stronger legislative action. The recognition of domestic work should also be reflected in bilateral and multilateral migration agreements.

And the recruitment industry needs to be better regulated at the national and international levels. There is a need to review current legislation and assess the scope for criminal prosecution and administrative sanctions against abusive recruitment practices.

Finally, we need to reduce poverty and improve people’s chances of finding decent work in their own countries. At the same time, migration is a reality of our globalized economy. And if we don’t want it to turn into a nightmare of trafficking, debt, exploitation and violence, we need to make it safe so that people – and women in particular – can work in freedom everywhere.

Learn more about the ILO’s “Work In Freedom” program

Laura Addati, ILO’s,
Maternity Protection and Work-Family Specialist

Let me tell you briefly the stories of Afia and Melba.

Afia gets up every day at 5 a.m. to fetch water from a well two miles away from her farm in Djanipe (Togo) to prepare a family meal before going off to her farming or trading activities  When she comes back home in the evening, she is too tired to play with her two children, aged four and two.

Soglo, her husband, works shorter hours and does not participate in childcare or household chores.  They have been hit hard by the lack of rainfall and are constantly struggling to make ends meet.

Afia fears the children might be malnourished and is thinking about borrowing money from a neighbour to get her son Edem into primary school. She would prefer not to have any more children, but family planning services are not available.

Thousands of miles away, in the Bronx, New York, Melba is expecting a baby. It is her third child with her partner José, who is employed on short-term contracts in the construction sector.

Household financial management is a challenge, with Melba working part-time as a cashier at a local supermarket in order to care for her two-year-old, Meagan, and taking her four-year-old , John, back and forth to pre-school.

Sometimes a friend or a babysitter is in charge of the children while Melba and José are working, usually in the late afternoon or early evening. They cannot afford a day-care centre, where Meagan would enjoy enriching learning activities, and Melba is about to go on maternity leave without any protection, as her contracts are not subject to collective agreements.

In my work in social protection, I have come across many Afias and Melbas who represent the failure of societies to provide maternity protection and good solutions to support the reconciliation of work and childcare responsibilities for both women and men.

And when this happens, negative outcomes ensue, both for economies and families. Parents –most often women – must forego opportunities for decent work, having to do part-time work or working in vulnerable and informal economic activities.

Gender inequality is reinforced within the home and in workplaces, whilst household income is severely reduced, undermining basic family needs, such as health care, food, nutrition and education.

As a result, children are deprived of opportunities for quality care and learning, seriously impairing their chances of succeeding in life.

In this context, Governments must understand that the economy suffers because it misses the opportunity to harness its human capital efficiently for economic growth.

Strong investments are needed in the social sector and across the life cycle, starting with pregnancy, childbirth, maternity protection, parental leave, early childhood development and care. This should continue through adolescence to young people’s entry into paid jobs, as a guarantee to future decent work.

It is necessary to incorporate work,-family policies, including maternity protection, into national legislative frameworks and to support workers with family responsibilities, also introducing paid paternity leave as a strategy to encourage men to share in the care of children.

Several studies have demonstrated how early childhood care and education programs improve, not only the development status of young children, but also the labour force participation rates of women. A study in Argentina assessing the impact of the expansion of pre-school infrastructure on women’s employment, found that women’s probabilities of being employed rose between 7 and 14 percentage points.

There are many examples about the positive results of family-focused social protection schemes.

In Malawi, for instance, the implementation of social cash transfer programmes with primary caregivers, (mostly mothers and grandmothers), as beneficiaries has helped to retain children at school and to keep them from seeking employment in the tea and tobacco estates to supplement household incomes.

By contrast, austerity measures put in place in Europe in response to the current economic crisis has meant a setback to achieved progress. Cuts in health care and education in countries like Greece, Spain, Italy, Ireland or the UK, call for a thorough review of current austerity policies, particularly as Europe cannot afford to fail its working families.

ILO and UNICEF are working together to facilitate a more integrated approach that would reduce the risk of perpetuating poverty, inequality and social exclusion. It would increase the likelihood of a virtuous circle of decent work interacting with strong childhood development policies to generate positive outcomes in terms of family and societal well-being.

It is a matter of dignity for societies and for millions of individuals who fight very hard every day not just to provide the basic for their families, but to enjoy life with them.

Like Afia. Like Melba.