Trade and Employment From Myths to Facts - International Labour ...

Chapter 5: Gender aspects of trade
the Republic of Korea’s manufacturing sector, they stood at only 58 per cent in 2007
(ILO, 2011).
The obvious candidate for explaining women workers’ inability to move into
higher-paying, more-skilled jobs, and the slow narrowing of gender wage gaps with
upgrading in manufacturing industries, is women’s limited skills compared to men
(Doraisami, 2008; Berik, 2000). Even if the skills-mismatch explanation has become
increasingly untenable in light of women’s educational gains in recent years (Milberg
and Tejani, 2010), a shortfall in educational qualifications still is likely to be valid.
Measures such as years of schooling or gross enrolment ratios may not be good
measures of the required skill levels in particular industries and occupations. As
Rodgers, Zveglich and Wherry (2006) show in the case of vocational training in
Taiwan, women are not as well placed as men to qualify for the high-paying jobs
offered by industries that are upgrading. To the extent that workforce development
policy does not set separate targets for women and men, most women specialize
in clerical occupations and most men major in technical ones. Sex segregation in
specialization in vocational schools thus widens the gender disadvantage in access
to new employment and is reflected in wage premium differentials of women and
men.
In addition, skills are filtered through the prism of gender norms, as pointed
out earlier. Gendered notions of women’s and men’s work and the underlying abilities
of women and men shape employer perceptions of women’s and men’s abilities,
their hiring practices and the patterns of employment segregation. Thus, employer
discrimination in hiring and placement may also be preventing women from gaining
access to jobs that are deemed to require skilled labour. In the context of industrial
upgrading, women may not be able to shake off their association with unskilled
work and have difficulty moving into skilled positions in manufacturing. And with
the relative growth of the service economy, women may be perceived as more suitable
to staff lower-paying occupations that are consistent with gender norms (such
as caring jobs). Thus, the policy challenge is to ensure job gains for women in the
growing sectors by making sure that women have the requisite skills to take these
jobs and to support this outcome through the enforcement of antidiscrimination
policies and upholding of collective bargaining rights.
All in all, in absolute terms, women in developing countries have benefited
from employment opportunities created in export sectors. Women now earn incomes
that are higher than their income from alternative jobs (or the case of no jobs).
Trends in wages and gender wage gaps, on the other hand, suggest that trade liberalization,
together with the decentralization of global production and investment
liberalization, contributes to the generation of large labour supplies in the global
economy. These processes have placed women workers in tradable sectors in a vulnerable
position as firms compete in the global market and have more freedom to
relocate. As a result, working conditions in export jobs fall short of complying with
ILO Conventions, and much has to be done on the policy front to ensure that employment
gains remain and increase and women are able to gain access to new,
higher-paying jobs when the economy moves up the technology ladder.
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