Global economic crisis will create more women unemployed: ILO

The global economic crisis and deepening  recession will hurt women more as the number of unemployed women is expected to rise to 22 million this year, the International Labour Organization says.

Releasing its annual Global Employment Trends for Women report yesterday in the run up to this year's annual International Women's Day, which is to be marked on 6 March at the ILO in Geneva, the ILO said that the global jobs crisis is expected to worsen sharply with the deepening of the recession in 2009.

The ILO also said that the global economic crisis would place new hurdles in the path toward sustainable and socially equitable growth making decent work for women increasingly more difficult, and called for ''creative solutions'' to address the gender gap.

The report indicates that of the 3 billion people employed around the world in 2008, 1.2 billion were women or 40.4 per cent. It said that in 2009, the global unemployment rate for women could reach 7.4 per cent, compared to 7.0 per cent for men.

The report says that the gender impact of the economic crisis in terms of unemployment rates is expected to be more detrimental for females than for males in most regions of the world and most clearly in Latin America and the Caribbean.

It adds that the only regions where unemployment rates are expected to be less detrimental for women are East Asia, the developed economies and the non- EU South Eastern Europe and CIS which had narrower gender gaps in terms of job opportunities prior to the current economic crisis.

The labour market projections for 2009 show deterioration in global labour markets for both women and men. The ILO projects that the global unemployment rate could reach between 6.3 per cent and 7.1 per cent, with a corresponding female unemployment rate ranging from 6.5 to 7.4 per cent, compared to 6.1 per cent to 7.0 per cent for men.

This would result in an increase of between 24 million and 52 million people unemployed worldwide, of which from 10 million to 22 million would be women.

At the same time, the ILO also projects that the global vulnerable employment rate would range from 50.5 to 54.7 per cent for women in 2009, and 47.2 and 51.8 per cent for men, indicating that while the burden of vulnerability is still greater for women, the crisis is pushing more men into vulnerable employment compared to 2007.

ILO Director-General Juan Somavia said that gender equality should be a key principle in any policy response, as the effects of the economic and financial crisis go beyond the scope of women in the world of work and have an impact on the overall stability of society, considering the various roles that women play.

In a statement issued for International Women's Day, Somavia said, ''Gender inequality in the world of work has long been with us - but it is likely that it will be exacerbated by the crisis.''

''In times of economic upheaval, women often experience the negative consequences more rapidly and are slower to enjoy the benefits of recovery. And already before the crisis, the majority of working women were in the informal economy with lower earnings and less social protection,'' he added.