Abstract
In 2007, 1.2 billion women were working worldwide. It was 200 million or 18.4 percent higher compared to ten years. But the number of unemployed women also grew during the same period, rising from 70.2 to 81.6 million, and in 2007, with an unemployment rate of 6.4 percent, women continued to have global probability of being unemployed superior to men, whose unemployment rate was 5.7 percent. For women who do find work, they are often confined to sectors of the economy less productive and in groups of employment status that have both a higher economic risk and a lower probability of meeting the criteria defining decent work, including access to social protection, fundamental rights and a voice at work.
Moreover, with the type of employment where women can find job (both in terms of industry as employment status), they often earn less than men. There are some major global trends in women's work:
-Of all persons employed in the world, 40 percent are women; this proportion is unchanged past ten years.
-The proportion of women of working age (from 15 years in most countries) who are employed (the employment-population ratio) was 49.1 percent in 2007 compared to 74.3 percent for men. Both ratios have declined slightly over the decade.
-In developed countries, part of the gap in the participation rate can be attributed to freely make choices that some women stay home because they can afford to be without work. But in some less developed regions of the world, remain outside the workforce is for the majority of women not a choice but an obligation. It is likely than women to choose these areas to work if he was socially eligible to do so. This, of course, does not mean that these housewives are doing nothing, the most performing household chores. But most of these tasks continue to be regarded as a non-economic activity, women who are thus not counted in the labor force.
