Friday, March 13, 2009

ILO warns economic crisis could generate up to 22 million more unemployed women in 2009, jeopardize equality gains at work and at home


The economic crisis is expected to increase the number of unemployed women by up to 22 million in 2009, the International Labour Office (ILO) says in its annual Global Employment Trends for Women report (GET) (Note 1), released here today, adding that the global jobs crisis is expected to worsen sharply with the deepening of the recession in 2009.

At the same time, the ILO also said that the global economic crisis would place new hurdles in the path toward sustainable and socially equitable growth making decent work for women increasingly more difficult, and called for “creative solutions” to address the gender gap.

The ILO issued the Global Employment Trends for Women in the run up to this year’s annual International Women’s Day, which is to be marked on 6 March at the ILO in Geneva.

The Global Employment Trends report indicates that of the 3 billion people employed around the world in 2008, 1.2 billion were women (40.4 per cent). It said that in 2009, the global unemployment rate for women could reach 7.4 per cent, compared to 7.0 per cent for men.

See full Press release.