Women’s employment: precariousness of indeterminate duration

Escuchar la entrada

By Dahi­ana Ay­ala.*

The cur­rent cri­sis in the la­bor mar­ket seems to be tak­ing on se­ri­ous di­men­sions, es­pe­cially for women. The la­bor pre­car­i­ous­ness that af­fects women on the verge of poverty, even ex­treme poverty, is ex­pressed in part-time, frag­mented and poorly paid jobs. The new gov­ern­ment of San­ti­ago Peña will have to find an ef­fec­tive so­lu­tion to the ter­ri­ble work­ing con­di­tions that the mar­ket of­fers women. Per­haps the an­swer lies in em­pow­er­ing women in the de­sign of eco­nomic and so­cial re­cov­ery plans from a fem­i­nist per­spec­tive.

Paraguayan women work­ers con­verge in a la­bor mar­ket that of­fers them very low-skilled, part-time jobs with­out con­tracts. This type of in­for­mal work, with its in­her­ent flex­i­bil­ity, ex­ists out­side the pro­vi­sions of the law.

Since 2019, the gov­ern­ment has been reg­u­lat­ing part-time em­ploy­ment, which does not mean that the pre­car­i­ous­ness of fe­male la­bor has ended. Women are al­ways the first to be af­fected by the de­struc­tur­ing of the la­bor mar­ket. The pat­tern that re­peats it­self is one where wom­en’s work is priced low, and which dur­ing eco­nomic crises is ex­ac­er­bated. As a re­sult, the im­pov­er­ish­ment of women is in­creas­ing and worse than the sit­u­a­tion of men. By 2022, the poverty rate of women has been higher than that of men: 731 thou­sand women are poor while men ac­count for a to­tal of 671 thou­sand. And if we fo­cus on ex­treme poverty, there are 216 thou­sand poor women com­pared to 198 thou­sand men in the same sit­u­a­tion. In per­cent­age terms, the di­vi­sion of poverty by gen­der can be seen in Fig­ure 1.

Fig­ure 1: Poverty and Gen­der (%)

Source: Own, based on data from the House­hold Sur­vey, INE-2022.

When we delve deeper into the analy­sis of in­equal­i­ties in the la­bor mar­ket, the data show that the sit­u­a­tion of women wors­ens if they are poor. Fig­ure 2 re­veals that, of the to­tal num­ber of em­ployed peo­ple liv­ing in poverty, 63.7% are men and 36.3% are women. In terms of to­tal un­em­ploy­ment, the sit­u­a­tion is re­versed, af­fect­ing 53.5% of women and 46.5% of men. And if we an­a­lyze in­ac­tiv­ity, the fig­ures are very sig­nif­i­cant: of the to­tal num­ber of in­ac­tive peo­ple liv­ing in poverty, 68.1% are women and 31.9% are men. This re­flects the fact that fe­male poverty es­pe­cially con­di­tions women to the worst jobs, the worst salaries, and the worst work­ing con­di­tions.

Fig­ure 2: Poverty, Ac­tiv­ity and Gen­der (%)

Source: Own, based on data from the House­hold Sur­vey, INE-2022.

When we look at the pen­sion con­tri­bu­tion of em­ployed peo­ple liv­ing in poverty (Fig­ure 3), men reach 5% and women 2.7%. Al­though both are vul­ner­a­ble be­cause they are not pro­tected by so­cial se­cu­rity, in the long run it ends up be­ing even more detri­men­tal for women since the sys­tem never im­ple­ments la­bor pro­tec­tion poli­cies for the types of jobs that women mostly have ac­cess to: part-time, do­mes­tic, and low-in­come jobs.

Fig­ure 3: Pen­sion Con­tri­bu­tion, Gen­der and Poverty (%)

Source: Own, based on data from the House­hold Sur­vey, INE-2022.

Un­for­tu­nately, women are pushed into in­for­mal em­ploy­ment. In the ab­sence of com­pre­hen­sive care poli­cies and the un­fair dis­tri­b­u­tion of tasks within house­holds, they are more likely to ac­cept undig­ni­fied work­ing con­di­tions be­cause “flex­i­ble” sched­ules al­low them to rec­on­cile work and do­mes­tic life.

In the case of women rais­ing chil­dren alone, the ob­sta­cles to their par­tic­i­pa­tion in the la­bor mar­ket are not only mon­e­tary. They lie in the low pro­fes­sion­al­iza­tion and qual­ity of cer­tain jobs in which women are over­rep­re­sented, such as clean­ing ser­vices and per­sonal and health care. This is be­cause the skills re­quired to per­form these tasks – car­ing, ed­u­cat­ing, clean­ing, as­sist­ing – are de­val­ued in the mar­ket be­cause they are con­sid­ered in­nate or nat­ural to women. An­other im­mense bar­rier to ac­cess­ing the la­bor mar­ket has to do with the in­suf­fi­ciency of ser­vices such as day care cen­ters and full-time schools, which would al­low women to have their own time to get a job and de­velop pro­fes­sion­ally. These con­di­tions con­tinue to deepen fe­male im­pov­er­ish­ment and, above all, wom­en’s lack of au­ton­omy.

Paraguayan women workers converge in a labor market that offers them very low-skilled, part-time jobs without contracts. This type of informal work, with its inherent flexibility, exists outside the provisions of the law.

In view of the enor­mous dif­fi­cul­ties faced by women in the la­bor mar­ket, one of the com­mit­ments to be as­sumed by the new Col­orado gov­ern­ment, headed by San­ti­ago Peña, is to ef­fec­tively in­te­grate the gen­der di­men­sion in the de­vel­op­ment and im­ple­men­ta­tion of pub­lic poli­cies for the fight against poverty and la­bor pre­car­i­ous­ness. The new pres­i­dent and his en­tire cab­i­net, par­tic­u­larly some min­istries such as La­bor, Em­ploy­ment and So­cial Se­cu­rity, So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Wom­en’s Af­fairs, must be clear that so­lu­tions can­not be gen­er­ated if women are not con­sid­ered in de­ci­sion mak­ing.

Re­think­ing al­ter­na­tives for women in the la­bor mar­ket must start from a thor­ough knowl­edge of the ex­ist­ing gen­der in­equal­i­ties, which are even more pro­nounced in the case of poor women, rural women, in­dige­nous women, women of African de­scent, trans women, women de­prived of their free­dom, women rais­ing chil­dren alone and car­ing for other fam­ily mem­bers, women em­ployed in ser­vice in­dus­tries, women with dis­abil­i­ties, women vic­tims of vi­o­lence, among oth­ers.

Pub­lic poli­cies de­signed in this sense must have the ca­pac­ity to cor­rect the dis­par­ity be­tween men and women. This can be achieved by mak­ing the award­ing of pub­lic con­tracts con­di­tional on re­spect for wage equal­ity be­tween men and women, and by gen­er­at­ing mech­a­nisms to in­crease the value of salaries in es­sen­tial pro­fes­sions where women rep­re­sent the great­est num­ber, oc­cu­pa­tions such as the care of de­pen­dents (ba­bies, chil­dren, and the el­derly).

Plans must have a com­pre­hen­sive gen­der vi­sion and must be trans­ver­sal to all ar­eas of wom­en’s lives. For ex­am­ple, the French gov­ern­ment, as part of its pol­icy of equal­ity be­tween men and women for the years 2023-2027, has im­ple­mented a cou­ple of ac­tions based on 5 fun­da­men­tal pil­lars: the fight against gen­der vi­o­lence, eco­nomic op­por­tu­ni­ties for women, com­pre­hen­sive ed­u­ca­tion for girls, health, and po­lit­i­cal eman­ci­pa­tion.

Each of these pil­lars is re­in­forced through spe­cific ac­tions. In the case of the pil­lar linked to eco­nomic op­por­tu­ni­ties, it em­pha­sizes the role of com­pa­nies and the civil ser­vice in achiev­ing equal pay and ac­cess to po­si­tions of re­spon­si­bil­ity through a pro­fes­sional equal­ity in­dex to which com­pa­nies will be sub­ject. It also pro­vides fi­nan­cial sup­port for young women to ac­cess dig­i­tal and tech­no­log­i­cal pro­fes­sions.

To pro­mote poli­cies of this type, the gov­ern­ment will re­quire, in ad­di­tion to a great deal of ex­per­tise, a strong com­mit­ment to re­duc­ing gen­der-based in­equal­i­ties. To do so, it will be es­sen­tial to rec­og­nize them as such, with­out eu­phemisms.

* Doc­toral can­di­date in Eco­nom­ics and So­ci­ol­ogy of Work at Aix Mar­seille Uni­ver­sité

Cover im­age: Yuki Yshizuka for Terere Cóm­plice