Smart women, right decisions: a recipe for decent work

International Women’s Day 2008:

The Global Employment Trends for Women 2008 report shows that in 2007, 1.2 billion women around the world worked, almost 200 million or 18.4 per cent more than ten years ago.

But the report also highlights that the share of vulnerable employment, although decreasing from 56.1% to 51.7% between 1997 and 2007, continues to be higher for women than for men, especially in the world’s poorest regions.

“Increased labour force participation of women has great potential as a contribution to economic development, but only if the jobs in which women are engaged are decent”, the report said.

“The model to aim for is one in which women are able to contribute to growth and at the same time, profit from this growth as participants in labour markets, keeping in mind that the one does not automatically follow from the other.”

This is something Ms Rupa Manel Silva, founder of the Women’s Bank in Sri Lanka, can relate to. She was one of five siblings born to a rural family who dreamed of sending all their children to university. But the death of her father sent the family into deep economic crisis.

“My mother considered giving us marriage as a means of easing her burdens. I received a proposal from Colombo. I married in 1978 and went to live in the capital. I was 19 years at the time”, Ms Silva said.

“When a woman has no other opportunity to engage in some social activity other than contacts with the people around her, she is invariably confined to the kitchen”, Ms Silva said, who despite these constraints started collaborating with the National Housing Development Authority (NHDA) to carry out development projects where she lived.

Due to her leadership skills, she was soon encouraged to set up a small women’s banking team, a type of organisation that already existed in Sri Lanka.

“Though I did not devote serious attention at the start to the women’s banking team, I soon realised that I was undertaking a long journey with them”, she said.

The idea of these teams was simple - to encourage poor women to begin saving regularly, no matter how little, to establish a basis for loans.

The pooled amount was given each time to a different member of the group to start a project.

Over time, these small financial enterprises grew in size and quantity and became a bank. Its founder and leader was that same woman who years before had been given in marriage and confined to a kitchen.

Employment can take many forms, but as Ms Silva said, “if women are treated fairly and with respect, and are given the chance to take decisions and be responsible for their actions, then decent work becomes a reality”.

Decent work is at the core of the ILO’s agenda. Director-General, Juan Somavia said: “The primary goal of the ILO today is to promote opportunities for women and men to obtain decent and productive work, in conditions of freedom, equity, security and human dignity”.

A goal which is not only right, but smart.