More women working but inequalities are acute: U.N. | International | Reuters: GENEVA (Reuters) - More women are working than ever before, but most are stuck in low-wage jobs and virtually all are paid less than their male counterparts, the International Labour Organization (ILO) said on Thursday.
The United Nations agency said there were 100 million more women in the workforce last year than in 1996. But, for a total of 1.2 billion employed or seeking work, there remained sizeable gaps in their status, job security and pay.
The female share of overall global employment is 40 percent -- the same as a decade ago -- and the proportion of women seeking work has fallen in several regions including Eastern Europe, South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.
Women are more likely to be unemployed than men, and make up the bulk of the world's "working poor", whose families live on less than $1 per person per day, the ILO found.
"The pace with which gaps are closing is very slow," it said in the report released on International Women's Day.
One of the reasons female labor force participation has stagnated is that more women are accessing higher education and staying out of the workforce longer, the report said.
Female literacy rates are lowest in south and west Asia, sub-Saharan Africa and the Arab world, the regions where women are most likely to work in agriculture. Many of these women work as vendors in local food markets, and have more difficulty than men in accessing land and credit, the ILO said.
