International Women’s Day 2010 Economic Crisis The Impact of Women in the Metalworking Industry

1. International Women’s Day 2010 Economic Crisis The Impact of Women in the Metalworking Industry 10th March 2010 European Metalworkers’ Federation International Metalworkers’ Federation Trade Union Advisory Committee to the OECD (TUAC)

2. Structure • Trade Union Advisory Committee to the OECD • Snapshot: women in 2010 • Employment • Public policies • Financial Crisis • Costs • Impacts • Government response • Trade union response • Discussion points

3. TUAC • Trade Union Advisory Committee to the OECD • Official voice of the labour movement at the OECD • 60 million workers in 30 industrialised countries • Economic policy; employment; trade and investment; education and training policy; pensions; financial regulation; corruption; sustainable development/climate change • Financial crisis TUAC/ITUC coordinate trade union response to the crisis and inputs to G8/G20 meetings: • Washington, November 2008; London, April 2009; L’Aquila, June 2009 • Pittsburgh, September 2009; Washington, G20 Labour Ministers, April 2010

4. Women in 2010 • Women and employment • Increased women’s participation in the labour market: • 1970, 45% • 2008, 58% • Dual earner households are the norm • Exceptions: Japan, Mexico, Turkey • One in six children live in sole-headed households • Majority of sole-headed households are female

5. Women in 2010 • Women and employment • Women still do less paid work than men • > 10% • Largest gap, Mediterranean countries, Mexico, Korea and Turkey • Full time equivalent rate indicates much wider gap (Netherlands 40%) • Women do twice as much unpaid work as men • Japan 4 times; Turkey 6 times • Women earn less than men (18%) • No country in the world has achieved pay equity • Japan and Korea: gender wage gap >30% • Belgium and New Zealand <10% • Women hold 1/3 of managerial posts • Women work part-time more than men (20%) • Women work longer than men • Women are poorer than men (worse after 66 yrs old)

6. Women in 2010 • Public policies • Public spend on family benefits 2.3% GDP • France, Luxembourg, UK: > 3.5 • Mexico and Korea < 1% • Public spend on pre-school childcare: 0.6% GPD • France and the Nordic countries> 1% • Canada, Greece and Korea < 0.2% • Maternity leave: all countries; most financial support • 18 weeks, 13 weeks full earnings • Paternity leave: > 50% of countries • 2 weeks average; from 0 to 14 weeks (Ireland) financial support

7. Financial crisis • Key facts • Worst recession since the Great Depression • ‘Male-cession’ or a ‘he-cession’ • Financial crisis  Economic crisis  Jobs crisis • 34 million more women and men unemployed • ILO estimates 22 million more women will be made unemployed • Unemployment is a lagging indicator: worst is still to come • Crisis has reversed progress on achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) • “To free our men, women and children from the abject and dehumanizing conditions of abject poverty” • MDG1: full and productive employment and decent work for all, including women and young people • MDG3: gender equality and the economic empowerment of women

8. Financial crisis • Costs • Bailout of the 9 largest banks in the US, 175 billion USD, could have: • Financed universal primary education, adult literacy and childcare in 68 low-income countries for 3 years • Doubled the level of Official Development Assistance of the US • Cancelled the remaining debt of all the Highly Indebted Countries

9. Financial crisis • Impact • Women and men have different roles in the productive and reproductive spheres • Women and men affected differently by the crisis • Productive/ paid sphere • Headline job losses in male dominated sectors • Women highly represented in public sector now vulnerable due to cuts • Women over-represented in vulnerable jobs: • Part-time, low-paid, low-skilled, insecure, short-term, informal • Some women more vulnerable than others • Migrants, older workers • Reproductive/unpaid sphere • Women in their reproductive role will have to adopt coping strategies for impacts on household income

10. Financial crisis • Government response • Insufficient attention to gender equality • No assessments of the gender impacts of the crisis • No gender impact assessment of fiscal stimulus/policy responses • Insufficient attention to women’s reproductive role •  Effect – gender blindness • Fiscal stimulus packages • Employment creation • may be creating more male jobs, including green jobs which are being created in male dominated sectors • Training and skills • Insufficiently focused on tackling the barriers facing women • Social protection/safety nets • Insufficient level • Not targeted at promoting gender equality • Gender equality programmes/policies at risk

11. Trade union response • G20/G8: key messages • Financial and economic crisis is now a job crisis • Workers the innocent victims of this crisis • Past policies of inequality contributed to the crisis • Existing inequalities exacerbate effects of the crisis • Unemployment now the biggest threat to recovery • No recovery until there is recovery in jobs

12. Trade union response • G8/G20: key demands • Short term • Maintain fiscal stimulus • Maximise job maintenance creation • Increase social protection • Medium term • Change the underlying economic model • Build a new global architecture for governing the global economy • Policy coherence vis a vis decent work and labour standards • Trade union ‘seat at the table’

13. Trade union response • G8/G20: key demands • Maintain fiscal stimulus • Target job creation, including green jobs • Strengthen social protection, especially for youth and introduce a social protection floor • Combat labour market, income and gender inequalities in the post-crisis policy framework • Agree an Action Plan for implementing the MDGs and place decent work at the heart of development assistance • Support the ILO Global Jobs Pact • Tackle precarious work • Re-skill and upgrade the global workforce • Support just transition and maximise job creation • Deliver participatory and effective policy implementation

14. Discussion • Short-term • Tackling the jobs crisis • How to make fiscal stimulus packages/social protection work for women? • Gender impact assessments • Harnessing climate change to create green and decent jobs for women • Medium term • Changing the economic model • What are the priorities for women? • Inequality in the productive sphere • Burden of reproductive sphere • Building new global governance • How do we improve the numbers of women in key decision-making policy-making • Governments/intergovernmental • Trade union representation to G20 • Trade union decision-making structures

15. We Can Do It!