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Women at disadvantage in finding work: ILO

Findings are based on school-to-work surveys carried out in 2012-13 among young people in five countries in Asia-Pacific

Star Business Report
Less than 20 percent of the young women in Bangladesh are employed, according to a new study by the International Labour Organisation (ILO), which unmasks the gender biasness in the country’s youth employment market.
The findings are based on school-to-work surveys carried out in 2012-13 among young people in five countries -- Bangladesh, Cambodia, Nepal, Samoa and Vietnam - under the ILO's Work4Youth Project, a global partnership between the ILO and the MasterCard Foundation.
The report, "Labour market transitions of young women and men in Asia and the Pacific" -launched yesterday - found young women are at a disadvantage in the five countries in terms of finding work.
The countries' average youth unemployment rate was 14.2 percent, ranging from 3.8 percent in Cambodia to 28.9 percent in Nepal.
The unemployment rate of young women exceeded that of their male counterparts in all five countries; the average female youth unemployment rate was 19.9 percent, compared to the male rate of 11.9 percent.
In Bangladesh and Samoa, fewer than two in ten young women are employed. While in Samoa the employment-to-population ratio of young men is also relatively low at 27.3 percent, in Bangladesh the male employment ratio is four
times greater than the female ratio.
Female youth unemployment in Bangladesh stands at 22.9 percent.
The cultural traditions dictating the roles of women are also evident in the sectoral distribution of employment. Young women tend to find employment in the public sector, such as in education and health and social work but in Asia, manufacturing work is also open to young women.
The report said the few women who do work tend to be disadvantaged compared to young men when it comes to accessing decent work.
In the five Asia-Pacific countries, young men are more likely to be in regular employment than young women, are more likely to complete the labour market transition
to stable and satisfactory employment and to earn higher wages.
On average, the wage premium of the young male employee is 17.1 percent over that of the female employee, and the male own-account worker earns an average of 19.1 percent more than his female counterpart.
The report said Bangladesh stands out as the country with the greatest gender gap by far.
For female youth, Bangladesh and Samoa can be grouped as the countries with the lowest female employment-to-population ratios, the highest female inactivity shares and the lowest female labour force participation rates.
Across the five countries, male unemployment rates were consistently lower than female rates. The disadvantage experienced by young female jobseekers was especially strong in Bangladesh and Nepal, where female-male gaps in unemployment rates were 17 and 15 percentage points, respectively.
The report also said more than 50 percent of young people finished education at primary level or below in Bangladesh, giving them limited scope to getting decent jobs.
The percentage of youth leaving school before completion was particularly high in Bangladesh, of 53.4 percent. The country also had a significant share of youth who never attended school (13.9 percent).
The report found close links between education and employment. One concern identified is that educational attainment in the
region remains comparatively low, despite recent progress.
On average, 37 percent of young people aged 15-29 in the five countries are currently enrolled in school. It is 23.5 percent in Bangladesh and 59.6 percent in Nepal.
"Yet still far too many are not accessing education at all or are leaving before completion at the lower levels," said Sara Elder, ILO youth employment specialist and author of the report.
The most frequent explanation given for this was “economic reasons", thus implying that household poverty will perpetuate itself to the next generation.
The shares of youth in unemployment are also high in Bangladesh, at 4.3 percent.
While wage employment seems to be increasing in Asian economies, there is no doubt that selfemployment continues to play an important role.
Nearly half of the workers aged 15-29 in Asia and the Pacific are self-employed. The share of selfemployment among youth is 44.7 percent in Bangladesh.
The report urged the governments to place youth employment at the heart of their political agendas.
To help more young people find quality jobs the report proposes a range of government actions, including designing macroeconomic policies to promote job growth, ensuring educational access for all, preventing young people leaving education early and strengthening support for informal enterprises.