All too often people living in poverty are not treated as equals by the rest of society. “Poverty is humiliation, the sense of being dependent, and of being forced to accept rudeness, insults, and indifference when we seek help.”
Like poverty, discrimination is also multifaceted. The impact of poverty is compounded by discrimination based on race, caste, ethnic origin, skin colour, religion, gender, sexual orientation, health status and disability. This chapter has catalogued ways in which promoting opportunities for decent work can contribute to eliminating these barriers. Just as discrimination at work is one of the most damaging aspects of unequal treatment, so can the chance to work productively in decent conditions begin to break down the prejudices that often underlie social exclusion.
The starting point for all the ILO’s work to overcome discrimination is the right to equality of opportunity and treatment in respect of employment and occupation, reflected in the Discrimination (Employment and Occupation)
Convention, 1958 (No. 111). One of the most highly ratified of all ILO Conventions, it is a remarkably far-sighted and comprehensive instrument which continues to inspire national legislation and other measures. Equal access to job opportunities requires that national and local action increasingly emphasize positive and inclusive duties to promote equality and not just negative duties to avoid discrimination, and that systems of regulation involve the empowerment or participation of the disadvantaged groups. 48 The key to the success of an inclusive approach to promoting equality in the labour market is the active involvement of trade unions, employers’ organizations and other stakeholders in challenging discrimination and proposing constructive remedies.
Gender inequality is pervasive, and invariably impacts most severely on women who are poor. Consequently, gender inequality intersects with economic deprivation to produce more intensified forms of poverty for women than men. Working for gender equality is part and parcel of measures to eradicate poverty. One of the targets of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals is an increased share of women in wage employment in the non-agricultural sector as an indicator of gender equality and women’s empowerment. Although discrimination is clearly an obstacle to the efficient use of labour in production systems, free market systems have failed to end the patterns of exclusion of certain social groups and women in general that transmit poverty from one generation to the next.
The ILO’s Gender, Poverty and Employment (GPE) programme, a capacity-building programme for employment promotion, gender equality and poverty eradication, aims to increase awareness of the importance for the eradication of poverty of eliminating gender-based discrimination at work. The GPE strategy is to mainstream gender awareness into relevant ILO programmes being adapted to specific country and regional activities. It involves three steps: building a knowledge base; dialogue and consensus building among the social partners and other stakeholders, including representatives of beneficiaries of ILO programmes; and support in translating gender-based analysis into pilot activities. 50 This approach is being used by the municipality of Santo André in the suburbs of São Paulo, Brazil, which, in collaboration with trade unions, business, NGOs and local academics, aims to enhance employment opportunities for women and blacks. The GPE programme is also working with the social partners in China, Nepal, the United Republic of Tanzania and Uganda to improve their capacity to integrate gender analysis into national poverty reduction strategies.
The impact of HIV/AIDS adds a new dimension and urgency to the fight against poverty. The pandemic is dramatically affecting the care economy.
Women, themselves highly vulnerable to infection, are also often the main carers. Poor women – the elderly, adolescents and working-age women – are currently struggling to find ways of surviving and coping with the pandemic over and above their existing burdens. In Africa, 58 per cent of those infected with HIV/AIDS are women. AIDS killed almost 2.5 million Africans in 2002 and has left 11 million African children orphaned since the pandemic began.
AIDS is eroding the health of African women and the skills, experience and networks that keep their families and communities going. Even before falling ill, a woman will often have to care for a sick husband, thereby reducing the time she can devote to planting, harvesting and marketing crops.
When her husband dies, she is often deprived of credit, land rights, property or distribution networks. When she dies, the household will risk collapsing completely, leaving children to fend for themselves. The older ones, especially girls, will be taken out of school to work in the home or on the farm.
These girls, deprived of education and opportunities, will be even less able to protect themselves against HIV/AIDS. The ILO is collaborating with the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) to explore strategies and social protection frameworks to address the crisis of HIV/AIDS and the care economy, particularly in countries where poverty levels are high and where there is a high prevalence of HIV/AIDS.
Underpinning these strategies is a focus on integrating care economy issues into the PRSP process and the work of multilateral agencies and donors to ensure that resources currently targeted on HIV/AIDS not only are geared towards prevention and treatment, but also address the social and economic impact of the pandemic – which is hitting women harder than anyone else.
To learn more about this author, visit International Labour Organization's Website.
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