AFRICA: Global Economic Crisis Hits Educated And Unemployed Women

In many Middle Eastern and North African countries, the reliance on labour-based markets has long put women at a disadvantage for employment, an independent media organisation has said.

The global economic crisis has hit young women in the developing world particularly hard, says MediaGlobal.The organisation says that participation rates for women have always been low, 21.5 and 22.9 percent in the respective regions.n their latest report on "Global Trends of Youth Employment," the International Labour Organization (ILO) found evidence of an increasing gender disparity in unemployment rates in developing countries.

The agency expresses concern that policies against gender discrimination are being neglected in efforts to encourage the global economic recovery.

Released last Thursday August 19, at the launch of the United Nation's International Year of Youth, the ILO report found that youth unemployment has reached historic records with over 81 million young people between the ages 18-25 unemployed globally.The ILO found that not only do young women continue to have a harder time finding work than their male counterparts, but since the start of the crisis, their chances of employment has significantly decreased.

In an interview with MediaGlobal, Gianni Rosas, Coordinator of the ILO's Programme on Youth Employment, said that in developing countries, "Young women in most regions have become even more likely to be unemployed than young men."The unemployment numbers from the ILO report imply that the economic crisis had served to exacerbate gender inequity in areas where it existed before.

The organization presents its reports on youth employment every two years and Rosas says last year's numbers show worsening conditions for young women in the world's poorest countries.The developing world has long struggled with gender equity in its employment, with jobless women trailing behind that of males. "By 2009, the gap had increased even further to 7.3 percentage points in Latin America & the Caribbean, 10.5 points in the Middle East and 11.4 points in North Africa," said Rosas.

With the gender gap in unemployment, numbers increasing in the developing world, the ILO is warning that policies guarding against gender discrimination were being increasingly ignored in the response to the economic crisis.