Women in the workforce: barriers and struggles

Before this year, research about women in the workplace has consistently found that women and men leave their companies at different rates. However, due to the challenges created by the COVID-19 crisis, as many as two million women are considering leaving the workforce. If these women feel forced to leave the workplace, we’ll end up with far fewer women in leadership. Additionally, there will be far fewer women on track to be future leaders. All the progress we’ve seen in the past years could be erased. 

Around the world, finding a job is much tougher for women than it is for men. When women are employed, they tend to work in lower quality jobs in vulnerable conditions, and there is little improvement forecast in the near future. When someone is employed or actively looking for employment, they are said to be participating in the labour force.The current global labour force participation rate for women is close to 49%. For men, it’s 75%. That’s a difference of 26 percentage points, with some regions facing a gap of more than 50 percentage points. 

Women who want to work have a harder time finding a job than men. This problem is particularly marked in Northern Africa and the Arab States, where unemployment rates for women exceed 16%.

While vulnerable employment is widespread for both women and men, women tend to be overrepresented in certain types of vulnerable jobs: men are more likely to be working in own-account employment while women are more likely to be helping out in their households or in their relatives’ businesses. 

The freedom to work – by choice, in conditions of dignity, safety and fairness – is integral to human welfare. Guaranteeing that women have access to this right is an important end in itself. From an economic perspective, reducing gender gaps in labour force participation could substantially boost global GDP. The regions with the largest gender gaps would see huge growth benefits. Many developed countries would also see their average annual GDP growth increase, which is significant during times of near-zero economic growth. 

ILO and Gallup teamed up to ask women across the globe if they preferred to work in paid jobs, care for their families, or do both. The data show that a staggering 70% of women; regardless of their employment status, prefer to work in paid jobs. These are just a few examples of many globally that illustrate the workforce barriers and struggles reserved strictly for women because of their gender. 

 Women and men should be doing more and learning more about gender pay gaps and discrepancies in their own workplaces.

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Works Cited: 

https://www.ilo.org/infostories/en-GB/Stories/Employment/barriers-women 

https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/diversity-and-inclusion/women-in-the-workplace# https://globalnetwork.io/perspectives/2017/03/what-are-obstacles-women-global-workforce https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brookings-now/2017/12/05/10-facts-about-american-women-in-the -workforce/ 

https://www.careeraddict.com/women-workplace 

https://time.com/5766787/women-workforce/