The professional disparities between men and women have not seen a true decrease in the last 25 years and the situation will change when men assume more household chores, according to calculations published by the UN on Thursday the eve of International Women’s Day.
The International Labor Organization (ILO) revealed in a new report that the disparities between the employment rate of men and women only decreased less than two percentage points in the last 27 years.
In 2018, the probability of women getting a job was 26% lower than that of men, despite surveys indicating that 70% of women would prefer to work instead of staying at home. The ILO stressed that there were several factors that block equality in employment and that “the heaviest” is caring for children.
The last 20 years, the time devoted by women to the care of children and unpaid domestic work practically did not decrease, and that of men only increased eight minutes per day,”
says Manuela Tomei, director of ILO Labor Conditions department.
At this rate, she added,
it will take more than 200 years to achieve equality in the time spent is unpaid domestic activities.”
According to the report, 647 million women of working age (21.7%) in the world provide free and full-time household chores, and this percentage reaches 60% in Arab countries. By way of comparison, only 47 million men (1.5%) are engaged in this type of activity.
This inequality causes mothers to suffer a “professional maternity penalty” against employment, while fathers benefit from a salary bonus, the report continues. At the same time, the difference in wage treatment between men and women is stabilized at 20% in the world, sometimes double in countries such as Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.
We will not achieve a future of work with social justice, which we need, unless we accelerate the actions aimed at improving progress on gender equality at work,”
said the Director General of the ILO, Guy Ryder.