Equal opportunities | ILO Programmes | Tools

Equal opportunities

 

There is no doubt that discrimination and inequality among women and men has been present throughout human history and still persist today. Among the manifestations of gender discrimination and gender inequality those related to the restrictions and over requirements imposed to women access to employment and vocational development are the most irritating. Policy design and implementation is therefore essential at all levels where discrimination operates. These policies must be able to activate synergy among various social actors, public and private, governmental and non-governmental, designing general paths where each agency or institution according to its characteristics and objectives might insert its own programme and multiply the effect of the programme. An active women’s’ promotion policy must not only assess better employment opportunities through development programmes (employment policies and also vocational guidance and vocational training) but also must encourage cultural change in all its dimensions (roles and tasks assigned to women, work and occupational qualification parameters, responsibility for senior citizens and children.) An active women’s’ promotion must also have a follow up of its own standards and objectives.

All of the above makes the equality for women promotion a task that needs to be developed simultaneously at different levels:

- the creation a legal and normative frame - the implementation of concrete intervention to generate employment and training and also to ensure that norms translate into effective actions. -the development of information strategies and public relations, awareness, training of public personnel, coordination with women groups, vocational training institutions, political parties, trade unions, etc.

 

In summary, the task is to develop pro-active programmes conceived as sets of measures and mechanisms, general and specific, that imply a favorable step to achieve gender equality.

All of the above require the commitment of all the social actors involved: governments, workers, employers, NGO, international organizations, etc. An equal opportunity policy on employment and training is necessary not merely for reasons of equity and fairness but also because it contributes to economic and social development. It is also intimately linked to adequate human resource management since it implies an optimization of human capital (men and women) that will increase the competitiveness of enterprises and the country as a whole.

This site seeks to work along these lines by opening the following sections:

tools: this section will be devoted to documents that provide information, reflection or present international and regional experiences aimed to attain equal opportunities, particularly on the public policy arena.

ILO policies: this section presents ILO documents and links to ILO offices, centers and specific programmes pages. The section offers to those interested a panorama of the ILO activities, strategies and programmes concerning gender and equality in the world of work and training.

ILO programmes: this section presents the ILO programmes for enhancing opportunities for women in employment and for poverty eradication in Latin America.

 

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