An economy that works for women. Oxfam’s report

Oxfam’s report  An economy that works for women  outlines the importance of paid work as a vital route out of poverty for women. Yet gender inequality in the economy is now back to where it stood in 2008 and millions of women around the world continue to face low wages, a lack of decent, secure jobs and a heavy and unequal responsibility for unpaid care work, such as housework and childcare. Even in countries where the distribution is the most equal, it is estimated that women still carry out at least twice as much unpaid care work than men with an estimated global value of $10 trillion per year – more than the GDPs of India, Japan and Brazil combined.

Studies also show that inequality in economic terms costs women in developing countries $9 trillion a year; a sum which would not only benefit women but would unlock new spending power for their families and producing a boost to the economy as a whole. 

This International Women’s Day, Oxfam is calling for people around the world to stand up for women’s equal right to safe, decent, fairly paid work and a world free from the injustice of poverty.

References:

-23 percent global pay gap between men and women according to the International Labour Organization’s ‘Women at Work: Trends 2016’
-The World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report 2016 estimates it will now take 170 years to close the 23 per cent global pay gap between men and women and gender inequality in the economy is now back to where it stood in 2008 
  -The global value of women’s unpaid care work each year is estimated at $10 trillion according to McKinsey Global Institute report 2015
  -Global GDP in 2015 is estimated by the CIA World Factbook as $75.73 trillion at the official exchange rate 
– $9 trillion – annual cost of economic inequality to women in developing countries according to Action Aid’s Close the gap! The cost of inequality in women’s work report
-The OECD estimate that women still carry out between two to 10 times more unpaid care work than men: OECD stat Employment: ‘Time spent in paid and unpaid work, by sex’