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Labour statistics on women
Equal opportunity and equal treatment in the labour market are at the core of decent work. Unfortunately, women around the world still face additional hurdles to access employment, and once in employment, to access decision-making positions and jobs in certain sectors or of certain characteristics. This horizontal and vertical gender segregation of employment, combined with the unequal distribution of unpaid work (including household and childcare activities), results in differences in working conditions such as the gender pay gap and the over-representation of women in part-time jobs.
Gender equality is crucial to economic growth and sustainable development. It is recognized as a cross-cutting objective within the ILO’s Decent Work Agenda, and as a key goal within the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. In fact, Goal 5 of the SDGs is devoted specifically to achieving gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls, but gender equality is also mainstreamed throughout the other sixteen goals.
Table of contents
Gender data is critical for monitoring progress on gender equality and ensuring the successful implementation of the entire SDGs Agenda. ILOSTAT contains a wide range of indicators disaggregated by sex, as well as breakdowns relevant to gender issues and indicators on gender gaps.Â
The statistical standards adopted by the 19th International Conference of Labour Statisticians (19th ICLS) in 2013 have significant implications for measuring women’s participation in all forms of work and for assessing differences in their access to full and productive employment, particularly in low-income contexts. Learn more in the section Gender and the 19th ICLS.
Latest posts
Featured publications
Building Forward Fairer: Women’s rights to work and at work at the core of the COVID-19 recovery
This policy brief provides an outlook of where women stand in the labour market after more than a year into the COVID-19 pandemic.
Making Women's Work Visible: The 19th ICLS Standards, Purpose and Progress
This Data2X-ILO joint report builds on previous ILO reports on how new measurement approaches can help close gender data gaps in the world of work by further illustrating the differences between how women and men work and how improved measurement can support women’s economic empowerment.
Spotlight on SDG 8: The impact of marriage and children on labour market participation
This publication, drawing on a global dataset and new indicators developed by the ILO and UN Women, shows that women’s employment is shaped by domestic and caregiving responsibilities in ways that men’s is not.
Data
Below is a subset of the indicators available by sex. For all available indicators, refer to the data page.
New indicators show the gendered effects of marriage and child rearing on labour market outcomes
ILOSTAT presents a wide range of labour indicators allowing for the study of gender patterns in the labour market. However, until recently, these indicators focused on the individual, without any information on their family situation and its effect on their labour market outcomes. The ILO and UN-Women joined forces to surmount this limitation by producing labour indicators taking into account not only the characteristics of each individual, but also the characteristics of the household they live in. This novel database includes data on 84 countries (derived from labour force surveys or similar household surveys available in the ILO Harmonized Microdata Collection). It allows data users to explore how women’s and men’s labour force participation changes according to, for instance, whether they live alone, with a partner, with or without children, and the number and age of the children.
Gender and the 19th ICLS
Since the adoption of the standards at the 19th International Conference of Labour Statisticians, the ILO has engaged in an extensive programme of work to develop guidance and tools to support compilers and users of labour data on the implementation of the standards and the use of the data generated when they are applied. Below are key resources focused on the implications for gender data.
Measuring Women and Men’s Work: Summary of Main Findings and Recommendations from a Joint ILO and World Bank Study in Sri Lanka
This brief highlights the key lessons learned during the ILO-World Bank study in Sri Lanka. It provides recommendations for household surveys seeking to measure in line with the latest international statistical standards, in particular those adopted at the 19th ICLS.
Measuring Women and Men’s Work: Main Findings from a Joint ILO and World Bank Study in Sri Lanka
This report presents the findings of the ILO-World Bank study in Sri Lanka. It shows the key areas of inconsistency discovered between the labour force survey and multi-topic living standards survey, how those inconsistencies were addressed across a range of topics including the measurement of employment, labour underutilization and own-use production work. In addition, the report highlights the range of valuable data that can be generated when the 19th ICLS standards are applied through household surveys.
Making Women's Work Visible: The 19th ICLS Standards, Purpose and Progress
This Data2X-ILO joint report builds on previous ILO reports on how new measurement approaches can help close gender data gaps in the world of work by further illustrating the differences between how women and men work and how improved measurement can support women’s economic empowerment.
Lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic: Gender relevance of the 19th ICLS statistical standards
This brief gives a summary overview of the impact of the introduction of the 19th ICLS statistical standards on labour statistics, as compared with the previous standards from the 13th ICLS. The key gender differences between the frameworks are illustrated using data collected from pilot studies completed between 2015 and 2017.
Lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic: Closing gender data gaps in the world of work – role of the 19th ICLS standards
This report provides a detailed overview of the relevance of the 19th ICLS for gender analysis of participation in work and the labour market. It uses data from the pilot studies completed between 2015 and 2017 to illustrate the wide range of analytical potential when the new standards are implemented.
Measuring women's paid and unpaid work under ICLS 19
Why did the definitions of work and employment change and why is this change important for women? Find out in this policy brief.
Projects
In early 2021, the ILO Statistics Department started a three-year project to engender informality statistics, funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
The project is running in parallel to the broader review of standards for informality statistics, currently undertaken through the ILO’s Working Group on the Review of Informality Statistics. It supports integration of gender in the new standards, and the development of gender-related guidance and tools for measuring informality.
The main activity of the project is to test statistical concepts and household survey questionnaires, using cognitive interviewing in two countries in 2021 and a pilot field test in one country in 2022. The findings from those tests will support the working group in its discussions and drafting of the new standards, to be adopted by the 21st ICLS in 2023.
The project is also assessing the existing and anticipated needs for gender data on informality (data demand) and reviewing the use of data in strategy setting and policy formulation, making recommendations to strengthen the production, accessibility and use of gender statistics on informality.
For more information, please contact Jessica Gardner, Department of Statistics (gardner@ilo.org).Â
In 2019, the ILO partnered with UN-Women to create a series of novel labour market indicators, key to gender analysis. The main innovation resulting from this project was the inclusion of a variable on the household type in ILOSTAT, revealing how people’s labour market outcomes change based on their family situation (whether they are single or not, whether they have children, the number and age of children, etc.).
In 2014, the ILO partnered with the Food and Agriculture Organization and the World Bank under the Women’s Work and Employment Partnership, supported by Data2X, with the goal of addressing challenges in measuring work and employment to ensure that women are counted. The partnership supports research in two core areas: subsistence production and unpaid care work.
Methods
Indicator description: Household type
Indicator descriptions provide a concise overview of concepts and definitions, uses, sources and limitations.
Global Wage Report 2018/19: What lies behind gender pay gaps
The 2018/19 edition analyses the gender pay gap. The report focuses on two main challenges: how to find the most useful means for measurement, and how to break down the gender pay gap in ways that best inform policy-makers and social partners of the factors that underlie it. The report also includes a review of key policy issues regarding wages and the reduction of gender pay gaps in different national circumstances.
Survey methods to improve measurement of paid and unpaid work: Country practices in time-use measurement
This Review documents national practices in measuring productive activities through time-use methods. Covering the period between 2000 and 2016, it shows the extent of time-use data collection across countries around the world and highlights the main methods used in their implementation. The Review focuses in particular on modular time-use approaches that have been integrated with related household surveys, including Labour Force Surveys (LFS) and other socio-economic household surveys.
Exploring Light Time-Use approaches for measuring productive activities
The ILO has launched efforts to develop guidance to promote accurate measurement of time use in different settings. A particular focus is the development of a data collection strategy centred on the attachment of a Time-Use module to the LFS. The successful design of such an approach offers many potential advantages given the topic overlap between the LFS and TUS, common target populations, high prevalence of LFS internationally, etc. An in-depth review of methods and country practises has been undertaken to inform the design of such a data collection strategy. This review has focussed in most depth on Light Time-Use Diary (LTUD) approaches to assess their suitability. This Brief highlights results, lessons learned and main challenges identified stemming from that review.
Resolution concerning statistics of work, employment and labour underutilization
Adopted by the 19th ICLS (2013), this resolution sets standards for work statistics to guide countries in updating and integrating their existing statistical programmes in this field. It defines the statistical concept of work for reference purposes and provides operational concepts, definitions and guidelines for: (a) distinct subsets of work activities, referred to as forms of work; (b) related classifications of the population according to their labour force status and main form of work; (c) measures of labour underutilization.