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This article is a clear depiction of gendered based bias in the workforce. Women make up half the work force but take home between 20-25% less pay than their male counterpart and are more affected  by long-term unemployment than the average male.

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Promoting decent and productive employment and income opportunities equally for women and men is one of the key priorities of the ILO's Decent Work Agenda. Integrating gender concerns into employment promotion can contribute to more effective boosting of productivity and economic growth; human resources development; sustainable development; and reducing poverty.

The ILO implements a gender mainstreaming strategy in employment promotion in line with the relevant International Labour Standards ¹ and Global Employment Agenda (GEA), and as called for by 2008 Social Justice Declaration, 2009 ILC Conclusions on Gender Equality at the Heart of Decent Work, and the Global Jobs Pact.

Why integrating gender equality concerns into employment promotion?

Despite some progress made over the last few decades in increasing women's labour force participation and narrowing gender gaps in wages, gender equality in the world of work still remains an elusive goal. While millions of women have become successful entrepreneurs, women are still grossly underrepresented in the world's board rooms. In particular, in the developing world, women continue to form a large majority of the world's working poor, earn less income, and are more often affected by long-term unemployment than men. This is due to women's socio-economic disadvantages caused by gender-based discrimination and their double roles of being a worker and a care taker for the society. Women often have less access to productive resources, education, and skills development and labour market opportunities than men in many societies. Largely, this is because of persistent social norms ascribing gender roles, which are often, slow to change. Furthermore, women continue to undertake most of unpaid care work, which has become an increasing challenge in their efforts to engage in productive work, both in subsistence agriculture and market economy, especially in countries which are negatively affected by environmental change and HIV and AIDS.

ILO's life-cycle and rights-based approach in promoting gender equality in employment

A life-cycle and rights-based approach is promoted in promoting decent and productive employment and income opportunities equally for women and men. Girl child who faces discrimination in her early stages of life tends to accumulate socio-economic disadvantages, which can lead to reduced employability and higher poverty in her later life. Ensuring full human resources development, through equal access to education and skills development opportunities for youth could enhance their chances of higher employability, in particular, for young women. In adulthood, increasing employability of women and men through equal access to life-long learning and productive resources can also enhance their chances of obtaining decent and productive employment and income opportunities throughout their adult lives. This can also lead to better economic security in their old age. Creating inclusive labour markets adaptable to changing economic realities, but with equity and minimum employment and income security, can create more conducive environment for women's enhanced labour participation and better income security, especially for older workers and persons with disability.

What the ILO does

Over the past two decades, a wealth of experience, lessons learned, tools and resource materials have been developed to address gender concerns in various intervention areas of employment promotion. The ILO provides technical support to the constituents through undertaking knowledge development and advocacy, tools development, capacity-building, policy advice, and technical cooperation projects for direct job creation, in particular, targeting poor women and men in the informal and rural economy and in post-crisis countries.

In order to institutionalize gender mainstreaming in all the areas of ILO's work in employment promotion, a Gender Mainstreaming Strategy has been developed with an aim of ensuring that gender concerns are fully integrated in formulation, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of employment policies, programmes, and other actions.

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Highlights

1. Event

17-18 June 2013

The regional workshop, co-hosted by ILO, aims to share and discuss with ADB, ILO and DMCs the outcome and recommendations of the studies of the labor market, government policies and legislation conducted together with the recommendations made in the regional synthesis within the context of the global good practices reviews.

Promoting Gender Equality through Employment Strategies: ILO Perspective, a presentation of Naoko Otobe.

2. Event

25 June 2012

Palais des Nations. Geneva. UNRISD Seminar Series event with Devaki Jain, Naoko Otobe (ILO) and Mariama Williams (South Center) and an introduction from UNRISD Director Sarah Cook.

Gender dimensions of the world of work in a globalized economy, a presentation of Naoko Otobe.

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Promoting decent and productive employment and income opportunities equally for women and men is one of the key priorities of the ILO's Decent Work Agenda. Integrating gender concerns into employment promotion can contribute to more effective boosting of productivity and economic growth; human resources development; sustainable development; and reducing poverty.

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We live in a time where male nurses are accepted and actually valued. In fact, did you know male nurses make more money than female nurses, even though the nursing career is predominantly women? With that being said, women working in construction, which is a male dominated field, do they make more money than their male counterpart because they work a job that's not desirable by most women?

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The men to women ratio of those who attend college is 1:3. Those with a bachelors degree, 60% of them are female. Yet somehow 73% of those employed are males with a 37% wage gap in favor of men. This again speaks to the male's higher status further reinforcing women's lower status in society. Women account for 55% of all North American college students, but even when women have equal years of education it does not translate into economic opportunities or political power.

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It's clear that males' higher status makes them more valued in society and trusted enough to run a company. In fact, when entrusted to run a company, men are more preferred over women. In Canada, women hold (only) 11% of the seats on corporate boards and 21% of the seats in Parliament. Times are slowly changing and women across the globe are breaking glass celings, not just cleaning them

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This article shows a visual history of genders and job in the US from 1960-2013. Over the years, the lines between the male jobs and female jobs have been blurred but regardless of having the same job, the wage gap still exists and may continue to exist for a number of years further reinstating that there is gender bias in the workplace.

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A visual history of gender and jobs in the US

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Max Galka explains how gender differences in the workplace have evolved over time, both in terms of employment and wages.

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The hard reality that women are more likely to get hired because employers needs to meet a certain quota, versus the fact that these women are seen as competent  and qualified enough for the job is very concerning. Women go through the same processes as men to become qualified (go to school, get a degree etc.) yet somehow they're still undervalued. For a woman to have worked so hard and have all your accomplishments overlooked because of your gender is absolutely discouraging.

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The Case Against Gender-Based Hiring Quotas | Forbes

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Gendered inequality in the workplace are created by stigmas and beliefs that each gender has to be a certain way and play a certain role in the society. For years, males have been the more dominant gender and that backwards thinking is still upheld in the workforce. Women not only suffer from the evident gap in wage, but also face the possibility of abuse in the workforce and lack of respect.

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Gender Inequality: SUIT (Step Up Into Teaching) Program at ACU

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Although times are changing, they're just not changing fast enough. This picture depicting the differences of employment by gender over a span of 10 years shows little to no change in most fields. Women still predominantly work in administrative and service jobs while men work in more hands on positions as well as managerial positions.

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In some parts of the world like Britain, while older women are working towards breaking barriers, younger women have more traditional views about the workforce. Men are more suited for IT jobs than women and women are more suited for caregiver roles than men. If stay-at-home moms got paid market value wages they would each earn $117,867 a year (from UNICEF) but that's not the case.

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Younger British women are more likely have traditional stereotypical views about gendered jobs than older women, according to new research.

The Young Women's Trust, a charity that supports struggling young females, found one in three young women, aged 18 to 30, think men are better suited to being an IT technician compared to 10 per cent of older women, aged 31 and over.

Similarly while 66 per cent of older women thought people of both genders could be a plumber, only 40 per cent of younger women agreed with them. The charity questioned 2,693 people in total.

A third of young women thought nursing and caring were better suited for women than men, while just 13 per cent of older women felt the same.

The study comes almost 100 years after women first got the vote in Britain and 25 years after the Equal Pay Act.

But it found young women still believe that traditional male roles are within their reach.

Almost a third of young women thought they were "irresponsible to want to work if they are a parent of young children", compared to 17 per cent of older women.

When it came to fathers, only two per cent of all 1,400 women surveyed said it would be irresponsible for them to want to work.

Dr Carole Easton, chief executive of Young Women's Trust, said: "This is not just Generation Austerity - for young women this is a generation where the clock is being turned back on the progress made for women's equality of opportunity.

Credit: Martin Rickett/PA Wire

"Young women are struggling to get into the job market and too many are stuck on low pay or no pay. With their choices limited they are being forced back into traditional roles with few opportunities to enter and progress in the job market. Despite what they really want to do, staying at home may be their only option and they know it."

A further third of young women said they felt limited in their choice of career and were worried about their job security.

Four out of 10 worried about not having enough paid working hours and 21 per cent had been offered zero hours contracts.

Women were more likely than young men to say they were worn down and worried about the future.

YWT said this was all linked to the wider picture in the UK where almost half a million young women aged 16 to 24 were not in employment, education or training

The organisation is now calling for increased free childcare provision to help working mothers and increased enforcement of the national minimum wage.

"YWT is calling for improved recruitment and employment practices to attract and retain young women in a broader range of employment opportunities," said Dr Easton.

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Young women have more 'traditional' views on gendered jobs than older women

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Younger British women are more likely have traditional stereotypical views about gendered jobs than older women, according to new research. The Young Women's Trust, a charity that supports struggling young females, found one in three young women, aged 18 to 30, think men are better suited to being an IT technician compared to 10 per cent of older women, aged 31 and over.