Human Security and Social Protection in Crisis: Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic

[2G209] Gender, poverty and the world of work: Trends, challenges and strategies

*Naoko OTOBE¹ (1. Independent)

Keywords:Gender, Poverty, Work

Across countries gender inequality in the world of work persists, despite efforts for promoting gender equality in development during the last decades. In poorer developing regions, in particular, women’s employment is characterized by higher working poverty, labour underutilization and informality than men. This is because traditional social norms dictating roles of women and men are slow to change, resulting in heavier burden of unpaid care work on women and gender inequality in the world of work in general.
The world faces multiple crises: prolonged impact of COVID-19 pandemic, price increases of key food commodities and energy, worsening climate change, as well as increased political instabilities in various regions. In particular, the COVID-19 pandemic caused economic slowdowns across countries, and the poor have taken the blunt of negative impact. Due to the cumulative disadvantages, women and girls are more socio-economically vulnerable in crises. Those working poor, particularly continue to endure the negative impacts of multiple crises.
Promoting gender equality and empowerment of women and girls is one of the SDGs – Goal 5. Promoting full and productive employment and decent work for all is also one of the SDGs – Goal 8. Within this overall context, the paper aims to analyse the overall trends and key challenges of the world of work under on-going multiple crises with a specific gender lens, and explore measures to promote gender equality in the world of work and reduce working poverty. The paper will undertake panel anaysis, using the published data of the ILO and review relevant literature with a specific attention to gender dimensions. The paper presents various measures to promote gender equality in the world of work.