POLS2603 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Deconstruction, Parental Leave, Basic Income
Lecture 4 - Gender and the Global Economy
•How are men and women positioned in the global economy?
◦Labour Force Participation:
▪Ppl in or looking for paid work
▪significant gender gap globally
▪little change over last 20 years
•Decrease in gap is due to men decreasing participation, not women increasing
▪both men + women participating less over last 20 years
▪young women least likely to participate
▪lowest gap in sub-Saharan Africa
▪biggest gap in Arab states
▪Gap has grown slightly in SE Asia and Southern Asia
◦Job Quality:
▪globally women are over-represented in poor quality jobs, but there is not a huge
gap
▪due to women being concentrated in precarious jobs that involve casualisation
▪relatively non-gendered occ’s: elementary occupations (unskilled ag work),
managers, professionals and technicians
▪Overrepresented in clerical, service and sales workers, esp in non-dev’d economies
▪Underrep’d in skilled ag/trades jobs and plant + machine operation/assemblers
◦Informal work:
▪women overrep’d in family enterprises (businesses)
•income generated from their labour, but doesn’t often go back to them as a person,
goes back to the family
•consequences of power relations in the family + autonomy
◦Hours of work:
▪women more likely to be part-time
• = more likely to be seen as underemployed (where they want to be working more
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