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SECTION 1 2 3
EXTREME INEQUALITY
2089
EQUAL PAY FOR
EQUAL WORK
AT THE CURRENT RATE, IT WILL TAKE 75 YEARS
FOR WOMEN TO EARN THE SAME AS MEN
FOR DOING THE SAME WORK
The wage gap is higher in more economically unequal societies. Women are
significantly more likely to be employed in the informal sector, with far less
job security than men. Some 600 million women, 53 percent of the world’s
working women, work in jobs that are insecure and typically not protected
by labour laws. 208
In Bangladesh, women account for almost 85 percent of workers in the garment
industry. These jobs, while often better for women than subsistence farming,
have minimal job security or even physical safety. The majority of those killed by
the collapse of the Rana Plaza garment factory in April 2013 were women.
In Brazil, 42 percent of women are in insecure and precarious jobs, compared to
26 percent of men. 209 Country-level studies have also demonstrated that the
gender distribution of wealth, including land and access to credit, is far more
unequal than income. 210
The majority of unpaid care work is also shouldered by women and is one of
the main contributors to women’s concentration in low-paid, precarious and
unprotected employment. In many countries, women effectively subsidize the
economy with an average of 2–5 hours more unpaid work than men per day. 211
Even when women are employed, their burden of work at home rarely shrinks.
In Brazil, women’s share of household income generation rose from 38 percent
in 1995 to 45 percent in 2009, but their share of household care responsibility
<
Just 3
of the 30 richest
people are women
>
43