Women now outnumber men in the American workforce for the first time since the Great Recession ended a decade ago. According to a new IMF study, male labour has declined globally as female participation in the labour force has increased.

The “Employment Situation Summary”, data released from the US Labor Department, reveals that there were “notable job gains” in growing industries that hire more women, such as retail trade and healthcare, while industries that hire more men, such as mining and manufacturing, are shrinking.

The ESS shows that, last month, women in the US held 50.04% jobs. They also gained 139,000 jobs while men only gained 6,000 jobs within the same period. This can be attributed to advances in technology which has increased the need for labour in service jobs, but decreased the need for jobs that require manpower. Technological advancements, for example, have ushered the rise of automation in manufacturing, construction and other male-dominated industries.

Julia Pollack, labour economist at American labour firm, ZipRecruiter, argues that technological advancements have given a “boost” to women, opening up jobs that were previously male-dominated.

“The sectors that are growing, like education and health care, are predominantly women’s employment,” Ariane Hegewisch, the program director of employment and earnings at the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, told The Wall Street Journal.

“Looking at the 21st century, it is really amazing how profound some of the [sex] segregation is in the labor market.”

“It’s a milestone because it’s really heralding the future and not just telling us where we are today,” said Betsey Stevenson, a professor of public policy and economics at the University of Michigan and an Obama administration economic adviser.

“As women get into more senior positions, it creates more space to hire more women and brings more equality into management decisions,” Stevenson continued. “It’s one of those things that’s self-reinforcing and keeps on going.”

The last decade has seen major shifts in labour force participation in ‘advanced’ economies. These changes will affect the global economy in the next century.

“Participation has increased among prime-age women and, more recently, older workers, but it has fallen among the young and among prime-age men,” the IMF study recounts.

The study accredits these shifts in part to an increasingly ageing population, and the after-effects of the global financial crisis. The global financial crisis, for example, increased the share of two-income households as families now struggle to survive on a single-income salary.

The report also accredits these labour changes to: “labour market policies and institutions [working] together with structural changes and gains in educational attainment”.

The United Nations has predicted that the rising ageing population in ‘advanced’ economies, combined with slowing population growth will shrink total population growth in half by the middle of this century.

“The burden will fall on those currently considered to be of working age, who in a few decades will support close to double the number of elderly people they do now. Unless more people participate in labour markets, ageing could slow advanced economies’ growth and, in many cases, undermine the sustainability of their social security systems,” the IMF study states.

Furthermore, technological advancements have the potential for economic division in the future.

“Technological progress that enabled routine jobs to be automated may have reduced the demand for less-skilled labour in advanced economies and made certain jobs obsolete,” the study continues.

“While these global developments benefit the economy as a whole, and create new opportunities in other sectors, workers may be unable to take advantage of these opportunities due to lack of relevant skills and training, preferences, hardship involved in relocating geographically, or an inadequate return compared with their previous earnings.”

Labour changes are a challenge for global geopolitics and economics. Increased sex equality in labour markets are a celebratory milestone, but rising nationalism and xenophobic border closures in ‘advanced’ economies are not sustainable under this new labour system. The input of immigrants in increasing population growth, boosting the economy, and taking care of the older generations out of the workforce is indispensable.

Economists and policymakers must keep abreast of a rapidly changing labour market to ensure equality in all spheres of society.

L'articolo Women Now Outnumber Men in the American Workforce proviene da InsideOver.

Female politicians in Kenya are playing servile to their male counterparts by avoiding to run for the country’s top seat as they are presently rooting for putative candidates, who exclusively happen to be male, eroding a momentum of empowerment for women that began 30 years ago.

With elections scheduled for 2022, when current President Uhuru Kenyatta is expected to exit after serving a maximum constitutionally mandated two-five year terms, the emerging political realignment points to an all-male contest for the top seat, for now.

Martha Karua, 62, who contested for the presidential sweepstakes in 2013, emerged sixth in a field of eight candidates, after attracting 0.36% of the popular vote understandably throwing shade at the stance taken by the local women politicos.

As the current leader of the National Rainbow Coalition-Kenya (NARC-K) party which has three out of 349 members in parliament, Karua thinks the current crop of women politicians are stiffing Kenya’s women folks.

“The most unfortunate thing happening now in the Kenyan political space is that women parliamentarians are agreeing to become praise choirs for male politicians angling to succeed the current president,” says Karua, one of the few female politicians with an illustrious career that has also seen her work as the Cabinet Secretary in charge of Justice.

Beginning early this year, two disparate groups drawing in female politicians from across the country were unveiled, all beholden to two political camps. One coalesces around Deputy President William Ruto, going by the moniker name of Inua Mama – Kiswahili term meaning ‘uplift the livelihood of women’ – while the other calls itself ‘Team Embrace’ and is batting for a former Prime Minister and the country’s de facto leader of the opposition, Raila Odinga.

Despite the presidential elections being three years away from taking place, the country is oddly in a campaign mood.

This is after President Kenyatta and Odinga, 74, formerly bitter foes in the most recent elections held in October 2017, that almost pushed East Africa’s biggest economy down the precipice, publicly shook hands on March 2018. This historical gesture signalled a rapprochement between bitter political protagonists but it left the Deputy President’s political base feeling jittery.

“Everything was going well for him, and it was just a matter of counting the years. His chances at a shot at the top job were 100 per cent, now it has been reduced to 50-50,” says Dr Herman Manyora a political science lecturer at the University of Nairobi, the premier public institution of higher learning, referring to the Deputy President.

When Kenyatta ran for the presidency in 2013, he tapped Ruto as his running mate, publicly stating he would support his deputy in elections scheduled for 2022 after serving two terms. But after the 2017 elections, the president has been sending mixed signals.

“On his own Odinga is not a threat to Ruto. But backed by Kenyatta, who has the real power to thwart his chances, Ruto has a real reason to worry. Kenyatta and Odinga have become joined at the hip after the handshake, and together, they are a real threat, “says Dr.Manyora.

Currently, out of the 349 seats in parliament, only 76 members are female representing one-fifth of the total number.

According to Kenya’s 2010 constitution, women must have at least a third of seats in parliament and a third of appointed positions.

The constitution states that no more than two-thirds of an elected or appointed body can be of one gender, but does not set out a mechanism for attaining that goal.

Court rulings since 2012 have directed parliament to pass legislation to enforce the gender rule or risk dissolution – but previous attempts have failed, largely due to quorum hitches.

There are 76 female MPs in the current parliament, equivalent to just over a fifth of the 349 seats.

This underlines gender inequality in Kenya’s political system compared to neighbouring states.

Rwanda leads with 61%, followed by Tanzania at 36%, Burundi at 36%, Uganda and 34% and South Sudan at 28.5%.  Except Rwanda, none of these countries have attained the African Union standard of 50/50 representation of women in all leadership positions including political leadership.

In the absences of affirmative action, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf would not have become the first woman in Africa to become president when in 2016 she ascended to the top seat in the West African state of Sierra Leone. Journalist Monique Ohsan Bellepeau, later on, pulled off a similar stunt in the southeastern state of Mauritius in 2012. While in the South African republic of Malawi, Joyce Hilda Banda became president in 2012.

In Uganda, two women have vied for president; first was Miria Obote, wife of former president Milton Obote, who ran in the 2006 election, but only managed to garner 0.08% of the vote.

In elections held in 2011, Beti Kamya gave it a go, but only managed 0.06% of the vote.

In Rwanda, two women have tried to vie for the presidency including Alvera Mukabaramba, who made a stab in 2003 but withdrew from the race on the eve of the election, handing President Paul Kagame a landslide victory. She tried again in 2010, but only got 0.04% of the vote

This is a telling indication that despite the patriarchal nature of African politics, woman are increasingly daring to run for the top seat.

When in 1997, a woman sensationally ran for presidency for the first time in Kenya’s 34-year-old history since gaining independence from British rule in 1963, this nation of 47 million people was under the heel of an intransigent regime that brooked no challenges to its hold on power.

And understandably the autocratic President Daniel Arap Moi, pulled out all the stops, cruising to victory with 40.4 % of the vote in elections held in that year.

Two women were on the presidential ballot that year. They included Charity Ngilu, 67, now one among five female governors in a landscape with 47 governors and Prof. Wangari Maathai who succumbed to cancer in September 2011 seven years after winning the Nobel Prize in 2004, verifiably, the icons who blazed the path for local women.

Fielding questions from the Los Angeles Times newspaper Ngilu had this to say:

“I cannot sit back and watch and wait and say, ‘Who can do this?’ I must do this. I am qualified because I am what Kenyans are looking for – a committed, dedicated, honest person who can lead them through the problems they have.”

In the elections, 15 candidates sought to dislodge Moi but floundered.

Ngilu emerged fifth with 7.8% of the vote while Prof. Maathai with 0.07% vote managed 13 position after the president exploited existing ethnic fissures that remain a feature in Kenya’s politics to his advantage.

The next time a woman ran for the top seat would be in 2007 when 40-year-old Nazlin Omar emerged sixth in a field of nine candidates after attracting 0.09% of the vote.

According to Nanjala Nyabola, a Kenyan writer, humanitarian advocate and political analyst, Kenyan politics, she says “will hold up women as emblems but denies them full participation in the highest levels of government, instead publicly referring to female politicians as “flower girls” and creating a political ghetto in the women’s representative positions that effectively writes women out of mainstream politics.

L'articolo Kenyan Women Reduced to Flower Girls in the Presidential Sweepstakes proviene da InsideOver.

The world leaders, civil society organizations and private sector representatives gathered in Nairobi for a three-day global summit on International Conference on Population and Development, (ICPD25) to deliberate on immediate action to ending maternal deaths, accelerate access to modern contraception, reproductive health services, stop violence against women and girls by 2030.

“In 1994 at the ICPD, we imagined a world where one day, no woman would die giving birth, where no woman would be at risk of unintended pregnancy, and no girl would be denied her right to make a safe and healthy transition through adolescence and adulthood,” Said Denmark’s Special Envoy for ICPD25 Ambassador Ib Petersen.

The ICPD goals are anchored on women’s empowerment and gender equality, a catalyst towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. Therefore, the Summit brought together diverse group of people including top government officials, thought-leaders, technical experts, religious leaders, activists and community organizers, young people, business leaders, indigenous peoples, international financial institutions, people with disabilities, academics and many others committed to sexual and reproductive health and rights.

The meeting focused on universal health coverage to improve access to sexual and reproductive health, measures to end gender-based violence and harmful practices, and the right to sexual and reproductive health care and finally the power in demographic diversity to drive economic growth and sustainable development.

“We have come a long way since the ICPD in living up to our global commitment to make sexual and reproductive health and reproductive rights a reality for all,” Says Arthur Erken, Director of Communications and Strategic Partnerships at UNFPA, the United Nations sexual and reproductive health agency.

Financing ICPD programmes of action was among the issues discussed. The new research done by researchers from UNFPA and the Johns Hopkins University, in collaboration with Victoria University, the University of Washington and Avenir Health. And it’s findings was released during the conference shows that only $42 billion in development assistance is expected to be spent on advancing these goals. That means some $222 billion in investments is required over the next decade.

“The Nairobi Summit represents a renewed, re-energized vision and community working together to act and deliver. Together, we will make the next ten years a decade of action and results for women and girls, keeping their rights and choices at the centre of everything we do,” said UNFPA Executive Director Dr Natalia Kanem.

The findings further shows the detailed costing per each programme objectives with over 95 per cent of maternal mortality in 120 countries will cost $115.5 billion for paying medical staff, drugs and obstetric supplies in key maternal health interventions.

While $68.5 billion will finance the unmet family needs like ensuring reliable contraceptives and efforts to strengthen national health systems. Ending child marriage will take $35 billion, gender-based violence in 132 priority countries will have a share of $42 billion and finally ending female genital mutilation will require $2.4 billion

“Closing the substantial gap with investment of urgently needed resources will ultimately improve health among women and their families and that vision is what should motivate us looking forward after the Nairobi Summit,” said Victoria Chou, a researcher with the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

The Summit, co-convened by the governments of Kenya and Denmark with UNFPA, where 9,500 delegates from more than 170 countries took part. The United Nations sexual and reproductive health agency unveiled critical new data about the cost of achieving these goals. It mobilized more than 1,200 commitments from around the world, including billions of dollars in pledges from public and private sector partners

“The Nairobi Summit on ICPD25 was a massive success,” said Director-General of the Kenya National Council for Population and Development Dr Josephine Kibaru-Mbae. “But it was only a start. We leave Nairobi with a clear roadmap of actions we must all take to advance the ICPD agenda and transform the world for women and girls.”

L'articolo Transforming the World for Women’s Reproductive Rights proviene da InsideOver.