Publications on Equality and discrimination

January 2011

  1. Publication

    Women in infrastructure works: Boosting gender equality and rural development!

    28 January 2011

    Gender is an important but largely neglected aspect of infrastructure planning and provision. Rural women pay a particularly high price for the lack of infrastructure, in time spent accessing water for domestic or agricultural uses, processing and marketing food and other agricultural or non-farm products, collecting firewood and reaching health services for themselves and their families. This ‘time poverty’ limits their ability to develop or access complementary sources of income. Rural infrastructure programmes can enhance women’s participation and benefits – as workers during construction and as beneficiaries of the asset(s) created.

  2. Publication

    Agricultural value chain development: Threat or opportunity for women’s employment?

    28 January 2011

    Agricultural markets are rapidly globalizing, generating new consumption patterns and new production and distribution systems. Value chains, often controlled by multinational or national firms and supermarkets, are capturing a growing share of the agri-food systems in developing regions. They can provide opportunities for quality employment for men and women, yet they can also be channels to transfer costs and risks to the weakest nodes, particularly women. They often perpetuate gender stereotypes that keep women in lower paid, casual work and do not necessarily lead to greater gender equality.

  3. Publication

    Rural women’s entrepreneurship is “good business”!

    28 January 2011

    Rural women increasingly run their own enterprises, yet their socio-economic contributions and entrepreneurial potential remain largely unrecognized and untapped. They are concentrated in informal, micro-size, low productivity and low-return activities. Enabling and gender responsive policies, services and business environments are crucial to stimulate the start up and upgrading of women’s businesses and thereby help generate decent and productive work, achieve gender equality, reduce poverty and ensure stronger economies and societies.

  4. Publication

    Investing in skills for socio-economic empowerment of rural women

    28 January 2011

    Skills development is key to improving rural productivity, employability and income-earning opportunities, enhancing food security and promoting environmentally sustainable rural development and livelihoods. Despite rural women’s major role in agriculture and other rural activities, higher barriers in education and training limit their participation in more productive and remunerative work, perform managerial and leadership roles and participate fully in the development of their communities. Targeted action is needed to dismantle these barriers.

  5. Publication

    Gender-equitable rural work to reduce poverty and boost economic growth

    28 January 2011

    Decent work is central to reducing poverty and achieving equitable, inclusive and sustainable development. Unleashing rural women’s socio-economic potential and fighting rural poverty involves tackling a number of decent work gaps: low productivity and low income jobs, lack of social protection, lack of basic work rights, and insufficient voice and representation.

  6. Publication

    Gender dimensions of agricultural and rural employment: Differentiated pathways out of poverty

    21 January 2011

    This interagency report on the gender dimension of agricultural work was produced by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the International Labour Office (ILO) following two years of work begun in 2009. It is the first comprehensive look at gender and work in rural areas since the start of the global economic crisis.

  7. Publication

    The Enabling Environment for Women in Growth Enterprises in Mozambique

    15 January 2011

    Assessment Report

  8. Publication

    HIV and AIDS related employment discrimination in China

    14 January 2011

    This report reviews the current state of HIV and AIDS workplace discrimination in China and summarizes a broad body of existing research as well as reviews new research conducted by the ILO and Maries Stopes International. The findings point to a trend of increasing discrimination against workers that contradicts both national policies and international standards. This body of work highlights numerous cases of employment discrimination in several key practices and puts forward a set of recommendations aimed at improving the situation.

December 2010

  1. Project documentation

    Linking safety and health at work to sustainable economic development: Project outline

    01 December 2010

    Global project under the Swedish Partnership Programme

November 2010

  1. Publication

    World Social Security Report 2010/11. Providing coverage in times of crisis and beyond

    16 November 2010

    This is the first in a new series of biennial reports that aim to map social security coverage globally, to presenting various methods and approaches for assessing coverage, and to identifying gaps in coverage. Backed by much comparative statistical data, this first report takes a comprehensive look at how countries are investing in social security, how they are financing it, and how effective their approaches are. The report examines the ways selected international organizations (the EU, OECD and ADB) monitor social protection and the correlation of social security coverage and the ILO Decent Work Indicators. The report's final section features a typology of national approaches to social security, with a focus on countries' responses to the economic crisis of 2008 -- and the lessons to be learned, especially concerning the short- and long-term management of pension schemes.