Women’s Economic and Social Life

Frances Raday

Human Rights Council, Mandate Holder, WG on Discrimination Against WomenProfessor of Law, Hebrew University, JerusalemConcord Research Center, COLMAN College of Management

The mandate of the Working Group on Discrimination against Women

in Law and Practice

HRC resolution 15/23 requires:

Best/good practices for the elimination of laws which discriminate against women

Ways and means to eliminate discrimination against women in law and practice

Recommendations on reform and implementation of law to promote gender equality and the empowerment of women

Discrimination law often focuses on the paid labour force. Our study also aims to address informal employment, micro-entrepreneurship, family employment, subsistence and farming work, home-working, voluntary work, migrant labour and multi-national corporations.

1. Employment in Formal Labour Markets

Access to the labour market:

Women’s labour market participation, informal labour market, family concerns, domestic work, part-time work.

Legislative, administrative, cultural or religious barriers to women’s employment in any kinds of work, e.g. night work, dangerous work, police force, professional military service, non-segregated work places.

National or civil society policy to promote women’s access to the labour market?

2. Anti-discrimination legislation

Public and private employers, in all sectors including civil service, agriculture, export processing and tax free zones, international corporations, family businesses, army, police, prisons and religious institutions? All categories of employees, including migrant workers (legal or illegal), refugees, domestic workers, part-time workers, short-term workers, volunteers? Recruitment, job interviews, pay, employment conditions, promotion, training, dismissal, retirement? Marital status, pregnancy, maternity, parenthood, gender (LGTB)? [notes page – HRC-WG communication re deporting pregnant migrant workers) Direct and indirect discrimination, including disparate impact?

4. Sexual harassment in the workplace

Is there an equal pay law and does it cover All auxiliary benefits, e.g. overtime pay, car allowances, health

insurance, pensions Equal pay for work of equal value and, if so, how can the equal

value be proved and by whom?

5. Maternity and parenthood

Paid maternity, parental and/or paternity leave and, if so, by whom (e.g. employers, State or insurance funds) is it paid and for how long

Legislation prohibiting dismissal of women during pregnancy and maternity leave

Any special health and safety measures for women in general and for pregnant women in particular

Affordable child-care facilities provided for working parents and, if so, by whom are they subsidized (e.g. State or employers) and who is eligible to use these facilities

Any good practices with regard to flexi-time, job-sharing or other measures which accommodate working parents

6. Enforcement measures What mechanisms exist e.g. special labour courts or tribunals, government inspectors, mediation or conciliation proceedings, an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission? Employers, in the public and/or the private sectors, temporary special measures to advance women in recruitment, training and/or promotion? Does enforcement include:

Criminal prosecution Civil remedies injunctive remedies, reinstatement, compensation for injury, punitive damages Employers provide complaints procedures and disciplinary penalties in the workplace Who can pursue remedies e.g. police, government inspectors, TUs, civil society organisations, class actions, individual complainants and is legal aid available? Is a reverse burden of proof imposed to facilitate proof of discrimination? Data available on the number of complaints per annum regarding discrimination, the kinds of discrimination alleged, and the remedies awarded.

In your view, is the enforcement of equal employment opportunity policy and anti-discrimination legislation effective?

7. Economic Occupations (i.e. Remunerated Occupations which

are not in an Employer-Employee Relationship)

1. Self-employed, executive and professional women:

What percentage of the self-employed are women and their median earnings as compared with self-employed men?

Percentage of women in the judiciary, legal profession, medical profession, accountancy, engineering, registered patent owners etc.?

Percentage of company executive directors, members of corporate boards or holders of top level positions (CEOs, CFOs and CDOs) are women?

Percentage of national sports and athletics teams are women? Percentage of government funding for commercial, industrial or

scientific entrepeneurship start-ups, scientific research, or budgeting for athletic and sports teams is awarded to women?

7. Economic Occupations (i.e. Remunerated Occupations which

are not in an Employer-Employee Relationship)

2. Army service:

Are women eligible for career army service and, if the army is a conscripted army, are they conscripted?

Are there restrictions on the kind of roles women who serve in the army can do?

7. Economic Occupations (i.e. Remunerated Occupations which

are not in an Employer-Employee Relationship)

3. Economic exploitation of women’s bodies:

Is prostitution prohibited or regulated and, if it is prohibited, who is liable to prosecution (prostitute, procurer and/or client)?

Is there legislation regarding trafficking of women for prostitution, forced marriage, organ transplants, surrogacy and/or work including domestic work? If so, does it include the three Ps (prevention, prosecution and protection) and the three Rs (rescue, rehabilitation, and reintegration)?

8. State Services and Benefits: Education and Training, Social Security, Social Services, Cash Transfer Benefits,

Pensions and Poverty

1. Access to education and training

2. Social security benefits based on work-related contributions:

Unemployment benefit, state pensions, occupational pensions, industrial injury compensation, redundancy payments, maternity benefits.

Are these benefits available to workers in non-standard employment (e.g. domestic workers, migrant workers, agricultural workers, workers in the informal economy, housewives, sex workers, etc.)?

Compensatory mechanisms for interruptions in the accumulation of benefits by women (e.g. because of child-bearing, child-rearing or accompanying their husbands)?

Survivors’ pensions)? Can women leave such benefits to their husbands?

8. State Services and Benefits: Education and Training, Social Security, Social Services, Cash Transfer Benefits,

Pensions and Poverty

3. Social security benefits based on need (means-tested benefits)

Income maintenance, invalidity, students or house-carers. If a woman is separated or divorced, is her need determined separately

from the family unit?

4. Universal cash transfer benefits

Child benefits, invalidity allowances. Special benefits for single parents’ or divorced women’s maintenance

8. State Services and Benefits: Education and Training, Social Security, Social Services, Cash Transfer Benefits,

Pensions and Poverty

5. Patterns of use of Benefits

Data on amounts of State expenditure in social security for women and men.

How are benefits paid (e.g. bank transfer, cheque etc.) and to whom are they paid (e.g. family unit, “head of household” recipient of benefit or mother)?

6. Poverty

Sex-disaggregated data on poverty, including data on poverty amongst older women, single mothers, women with HIV, widows or minority women.

9. Focal Point - Economic Crisis

1. Nature of economic crisis:

Nature of the crisis experienced in your country (e.g. recession, financial crisis, galloping inflation, environmental disaster, armed conflict)?

How are benefits paid (e.g. bank transfer, cheque etc.) and to whom are they paid (e.g. family unit, “head of household” recipient of benefit or mother)?

2. Public services

Reduction in public services.

3. Public employment

Reduction in public employment.

9. Focal Point - Economic Crisis

4. Social security benefits and pensions:

Social security benefits and/or pensions (public or private) reduced. Gender sensitive budgeting applied in the policy making as to differential

impact on women, directly (e.g. reduction of paid maternity leave); or indirectly (e.g. reduction of income maintenance or reduction of public sector pensions, affecting more female than male beneficiaries)?

5. Labour force participation

Did unemployment increase? If so, was the increase evenly distributed between men and women?

Changes in the patterns of labour force participation of men and women? (Including shifts from standard to non-standard work and from formal to informal employment) and if so, did the change affect women differently from men?

9. Focal Point - Economic Crisis

6. Care economy:

Changes in the care economy (e.g. reduction of subsidies for childcare, shorter periods of hospitalisation,etc.)?

7. Wages:

Any change in the extent of the gender wage gap? Lowering or wide-spread non-enforcement of minimum wage? Gender impact.

8. Migrant work:

Increase in women’s migrant work in the informal economy and domestic work?

Deportation of migrant workers?

9. Focal Point - Economic Crisis

9. Violence:

Evidence of change after the economic crisis in the level of violence against women in the home, in the workplace or in the public space?

10. Intersectionality:

Are the effects of the recession worse for women of colour, migrant women, disabled women, older women, adolescent girls or other intersectional groups?