Here’s some depressing, enraging news – a young woman entering the job market today can expect to do almost four years more work than her male peers over her working lifetime.
This is according to a new report entitled ‘Not Ready, Still Waiting’ by the charity Action Aid, which is being presented at the United Nations General Assembly this week.
The report argues that the time women around the world spend on paid and unpaid labour amounts to an extra month for every year of work.
Young women today can expect to work 4 more years than men over her lifetime. Govts must do more to #fightinequality https://t.co/KTHWnZLfJG pic.twitter.com/5NYYqQmMrv
— ActionAid UK (@ActionAidUK) September 22, 2016
Action Aid has calculated that if women received a wage for the extra hours they work, then every woman globally would earn a staggering €47,000 (£41,000) more over her lifetime.
“Most men and women combine paid and unpaid work during their lives,” the report reads.
“When they finish their paid working day running businesses, working for their employers, doing agricultural labour or selling fish at local markets, they return to their homes and do chores, look after families, and much more. However, discriminatory social norms mean that it is men who are much more likely to be mostly engaged in paid work, while women do more – a lot more – of the unpaid work, mainly in the form of caring for families and homes.”
Women work 4 years more than men when you add hours spent cooking, cleaning & childcare to paid work they already do #fightinequality pic.twitter.com/U3GrpVr8JW
— ActionAid USA (@ActionAidUSA) September 22, 2016
The report analysed 217 developed and developing countries, and found that women’s average additional hours of unpaid work over the global life expectancy for women (69 years) came to around 23 working years.
All of that unpaid work means women, globally, have “less time to go to school, participate in politics, get a decent job and relax. This, campaigners stress, “is a violation of their human rights.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gZhyTV18Wg&feature=youtu.be
“We do not mean to suggest that all unpaid work, including unpaid care work, should be remunerated, or to ascribe a monetary value to unpaid care, which includes what we believe to be intrinsically invaluable activities, such as loving and nurturing children and family,” said Girish Menon, CEO of ActionAid UK.
“Rather, ActionAid believes women’s unpaid work should be recognised, reduced and redistributed – between women and men, and between the household and the state.”
