SOUTH ASIA: Report confirms 'rampant' gender discrimination
Updated
A new report has found women are still well behind men when it comes to getting good jobs and good pay. Gender discrimination in the workplace is a global problem but in South Asia its rampant. That's the view of the latest and most comprehensive research done by the International Labour Organisation.
Presenter: Karon Snowdon
Speakers: Tim de Meyer, Bangkok based ILO East Asia Labour specialist
SNOWDON: There is some good news in the latest UN report on equality at work which has just been launched in Beijing.
Tim de Meyer is an international labour specialist.
DE MEYER: Ever more women in Asia receive ever better education and do search and find employment.
SNOWDON: But there's still a long way to go.
Women have a harder time than men in finding and keeping jobs, they generally get paid a lot less and in South Asia they still work mostly in agriculture without pay.
That means according to the ILO it's harder for them to get out of poverty.
On many indicators the South Asian countries of India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Nepal and Bangladesh rate just marginally better than the Middle East and North Africa.
DE MEYER: Compared to the other regions in the world South Asia is still lagging behind in some cases lagging far behind. On average in South Asia the pay differential is about 40 per cent.
SNOWDON: And why is it the case that South Asia perhaps is so far behind other regions of the world?
DE MEYER: I think on a number of occasions it is linked other forms of discrimination and other serious and persistent form of discrimination in South Asia, the class discrimination. Of course women from the lower class will suffer more than men will. I think an important factor is also the enormously high number of workers, particularly in India that are working in what we call the informal economy in India, it's up to 90 per cent of all workers actually working in informal economy. These are all aspects that contribute.
SNOWDON: And many women I guess have very little choice as they remain in a lot of instances the primary carers of children, and the informal workforce is perhaps all they can manage?
DE MEYER: I think that's a very sharp observation and the report also devotes some attention to that. But it's a definitely a realisation and awareness that we see much more pronounced in the more affluent economies. Take Korea, take Singapore, take Hong Kong, take Japan, they all realise to compete at their level in a global economy requires productivity, you cannot continue to grow if you do not make sure that women make their intrinsically equal productive input available for the economy, and that requires therefore that you need to think about schemes to share family responsibilities more equally.
SNOWDON: But there is an economic cost to excluding women from as much economic activity as they want?
DE MEYER: There's very little doubt about that, and again that's what's very, very clearly the more affluent economies are now realising.
SNOWDON: And Tim de Meyer says the effectiveness of affirmative action schemes is limited if they don't include access to education.
DE MEYER: Take for example India will have that for the lower class and the certain number of people are indeed benefiting, but it's not really successful if you look at the big picture.
SNOWDON: The ILO report also found growing discrimination against HIV sufferers and people with disabilities. It says the need for action to combat discrimination is more urgent than four years ago when it published its first workplace report. Its recommendations include better laws and enforcement and expanding mechanisms such as collective bargaining and codes of conduct.
