Decent Work: a socially dynamic concept

1
Decent Work a socially dynamic concept

• The primary goal of the ILO today is to promote
  opportunities for all women and men to obtain
  decent and productive work, in conditions of
  freedom, equity, security and human dignity

2
Decent work a human face to global economy

• Mainstreamed policies for
• development
• gender
• Focus on enterprise
• from local to global scale

3
Decent work mainstreaming development

• Copenhagen complementarity of economic and
  social development
• ILO advocacy role
• Research (empirical evidence-theoretical
  justification)
• Focus on the working poor
• Institution building for participation and social
  dialogue

4
Decent Work mainstreaming gender

• Gender
• a matter of human rights
• a tool to identify and address inequality
• key factor in the quality and quantity of labour
  market
• key factor for sustainable development

5
Decent Work mainstreaming gender

• The world of work seen through a gender
  perspective to
• analyze economic and social roles
• identify forces leading to inequality
• address de jure and de facto inequality

6
Decent Work Strategic Objectives

• Integrated strategies for development
• Fundamental principles rights at work
• Employment income opportunities
• Social protection
• Social dialogue
• FOR ALL, WOMEN AND MEN

7
Gender Principles and Rights at Work

• Core conventions directly relevant
• C100 Equal remuneration
• C103 Maternity Protection
• C111 Discrimination
• C156 Workers with Family Responsibilities
• C175 Part time work
• C177 Home work
• C179 Child labour
• C180 Maternity (revised)

8
Gender Rights at Work

• The ILO Declaration on Fundamental Principles and
  Rights at Work (1998)
• Freedom of association and recognition of the
  right to collective bargaining
• Elimination of all forms of forced or compulsory
  labour
• Effective abolition of child labour
• Elimination of discrimination in employment and
  occupation

9
Gender Rights at Work

• Declaration as the threshold to Decent Work
• a minimum social platform for the global economy
  (Copenhagen)
• a promotional instrument for universal rights and
  the development agenda
• a common objective for the international community

10
Gender Rights at Work

• Follow-up to the Declaration sustains
• Womens socio-economic empowerment, also in the
  informal economy
• New avenues for womens representation in social
  dialogue
• Further ratification of core conventions
• Implementation of fundamental principles and
  rights

11
Gender and Rights at Work

• Gap between de jure de facto calls for
  proactive measures
• Law enforcement mechanisms
• Information, dissemination, training
• Advocacy, mobilization, coordination, monitoring
• Trade union action and partnership with civil
  society

12
Gender and Employment

• More and Better Jobs
• Decent work qualitative approach
• Address horizontal and vertical segregation
• Equal remuneration

13
Gender and Employment

• Gender sensitive labour market policies
• Widen occupational choices
• Gender-focus training and re-training systems
• Enhance demand for female labour
• Improve womens awareness of opportunities

14
Gender and Employment

• Promoting womens enterprise development (WED)
• integrated women-specific sets of measures to
  facilitate
• entitlement and access to productive resources
  and credit
• access to markets to find better and more
  remunerative opportunities

15
Gender and Employment

• Gender is a determinant of poverty and crisis
  situations
• Integrated approach to poverty eradication
• Gender focussed crisis response and
  reconstruction

16
Gender and Social Protection

• Extending Social Protection to All
• To reduce insecurity at work
• To ensure safe conditions of work
• To maintain incomes
• To ensure adequate access to care and social
  services

17
Gender and Social Protection

• Women
• Lower earnings, irregular employment and
  contribution patterns
• Concentrated in the informal sector/atypical
  works
• Different trends in different regions, but
  regression in transition economies
• Specific reproductive role

18
Gender and Social Protection

• Its necessary to find innovative solutions to
• eliminate existing discrimination
• extend coverage to those who are now excluded
• meet specific needs of the workers, women and
  men, within their different roles, concerns,
  constraits

19
Gender and Social Protection

• Occupational safety health
• women have lower no of accidents
• higher specific health risks (e.g. pesticides)
• higher stress-related problems dual role
  (economic/reproductive)
• Enormously impacted by AIDS in specific regions

20
Gender and Social Dialogue

• Social dialogue matching economic growth and
  social justice
• a means to promote decent work and remove
  inequities
• an end in itself, as democratic participation

21
Gender and Social Dialogue

• Improving womens representation in SD structures
• to include gender issues on the agenda and meet
  womens strategic needs
• Reaching out new partnerships
• including EO machineries, non traditional actors,
  the non organized, SMEs , informal
• Reinforcing womens organizational and
  negotiating capacity

22
Gender and Decent Work

Gender cuts across the economic, social,
political and cultural spheres Gender
inequalities in the world of work challenge the
legitimacy of the dominant models of development
23
Gender and Decent Work

• Needs
• A holistic approach, macroeconomic level
• Mainstreaming gender at the highest policy level
• Attention to strategic and practical needs of
  women
• A new paradigm of development, integrating social
  standards into economy

24
Gender and Decent Work

• All actors of civil society should be involved in
  a concerted endeavour to promote equality between
  men and women