May marks both International Day of the Midwife and International Nurses Day – two groups of workers that play essential roles in any healthcare system. However, both professions – which are dominated by women – are characterised by long hours and low pay. So, what can be done to improve working conditions and help nurses and midwives deliver the best quality care to patients?
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are a set of 17 global goals to end poverty, protect the planet, and ensure prosperity for all. But with the COVID-19 pandemic upending the global labour market in recent years, progress towards achieving these goals has been disrupted. From rising unemployment and informal work to slowing productivity growth and persistent gender inequalities, the pandemic has highlighted the need for urgent action to build a more resilient and equitable world of work.
Generating high quality statistics relies on eliminating gender bias at all stages of the production process. This blog looks at how gender bias occurs in statistics and what the ILO is doing to support efforts to minimize it.
The pandemic wreaked havoc on people’s lives and societies, but how far did it set the global community back in reaching the SDG targets related to decent work and economic growth?
Released today, new global data covering 189 countries and territories expose the motherhood penalty faced by millions of women around the world in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.
How many men and women were employed last week? How many hours did they work in their main jobs? And how many hours did they work in unpaid activities such as caring for children? These are seemingly straightforward questions but measuring paid and unpaid work through household surveys is anything but straightforward. This holds true especially for women in developing countries, who are more often engaged in informal activities such as microenterprises or small-scale farming — activities that can fall through the cracks of traditional surveys.
The United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals set out a shared vision to end poverty, fight inequality and injustice, and tackle climate change by 2030. Will the pandemic reverse progress in advancing decent work for all as prescribed under Goal 8? It seems likely, at least for women.
The data is abundantly clear on one point: the COVID-19 pandemic has had a disproportionately negative impact on women. Because more women work in the tourism, retail, and informal sectors, which have been hardest hit by the pandemic, their livelihoods have been upended. Understanding the extent of this impact is the first step in reversing course. Yet the pandemic has also exposed and exacerbated data gaps that undermine our ability to act intentionally and craft effective policy responses.
The international migration of women, either together with their family or on their own, is an increasingly important and complex phenomenon but remains insufficiently documented owing to a lack of data. New ILOSTAT data offer some insights on the profile of women looking for work and better opportunities abroad.
A workable balance is what parents are desperately trying to find in these uncertain times. Even in “normal” times, the balance between work and family has not been an easy one to achieve. The challenge is not new, especially for women. But the pandemic is shining a stadium size light to the problem, can it also shine light on the solution?
