During the 1980s and 1990s women’s participation in labour markets worldwide grewsubstantially. This gave rise to expectations that increased opportunities and economic autonomyfor women would bring greater gender equality. To help determine the extent to which such hopesare being realized, it is necessary to analyse women’s labour market trends in more detail.

 To thisend, the Global Employment Trends for Women Brief 2007 focuses on whether the tendency towardincreased participation has continued more recently and whether women have found enough decentand productive jobs to really enable them to use their potential in the labour market and achieveeconomic independence.The approach is based on updates and analysis of a number of major labour market indicators.These include: labour force participation; unemployment; sector and status of employment;wages/earnings; and education and skills. Taken together, they show whether women who want towork actually do so, whether women find it harder to get a job than men, differences in the type ofwork done by women and men and equality of treatment in areas ranging from pay to education andtraining.Main findings are:•In absolute numbers, more women than ever before are participating in labour marketsworldwide. They are either in work or actively looking for a job.
•This overall figure only tells part of the story, however. During the past ten years, thelabour force participation rate (the share of working-age women who work or areseeking work) stopped growing, with many regions registering declines. This reversalis notable, even though it partially reflects greater participation of young women ineducation.
•More women than ever before are actually in work1. The female share of totalemployment stayed almost unchanged at 40 percent in 2006 (from 39.7 per cent 10years ago).
•At the same time, more women than ever before are unemployed, with the rate ofwomen’s unemployment (6.6 per cent) higher than that of men (6.1 per cent).
•Women are more likely to work in low productivity jobs in agriculture and services.Women’s share in industrial employment is much smaller than men’s and hasdecreased over the last ten years.
•The poorer the region, the greater the likelihood that women work as unpaidcontributing family members2 or low-income own-account workers. Female contributing family workers, in particular, are not likely to be economicallyindependent.
•The step from unpaid contributing family worker or low-paid own-account worker towage and salaried employment is a major step toward freedom and self-determinationfor many women. The share of women in wage and salaried work grew during the pastten years from 42.9 per cent in 1996 to 47.9 per cent in 2006. However, especially inthe world’s poorest regions, this share is still smaller for women than for men,wage gap for some occupations.•Young women are more likely to be able to read and write than 10 years ago. Butthere is still a gap between female and male education levels. And there isconsiderable doubt that women get the same chances as men to develop their skillsthroughout their working lives.These trends show that despite some progress, there is no cause for complacency. Policies toenhance women’s chances to participate equally in labour markets are starting to pay off, but thepace with which gaps are closing is very slow. As a result, women are more likely than men tobecome discouraged and give up hope of being economically active. And for women who work,there is a greater likelihood to be among the working poor – they work but they do not earn enoughto lift themselves and their families out of poverty. Given finally the persisting lack of socioeconomicempowerment for women and unequal distribution of household responsibilities, thereremains some way to go to achieve equality between men and women.At a time when the world increasingly realizes that decent and productive work is the onlysustainable way out of poverty, analyzing women’s role in the world of work is particularlyimportant. Progress on full, productive and decent employment, a new target within the MillenniumDevelopment Goals, will only be possible if the specific needs for women in labour markets areaddressed.3