Economic Crisis Hits Asian Women Harder and Differently - Building Gender Balanced Business

• 27 million more people can expect to lose their jobs this year in Asia, and as a result 140 million more could fall into extreme poverty.

• The economic crisis is not fair in gender terms. While women are faring less poorly in some regions, like the US, they will suffer more and differently from men in Asia.

• Women hold a disproportionate number of jobs in the export sector across Asia, jobs that are already evaporating as trade shrinks, writes Amelita King Dejardin, a senior technical adviser in the International Labour Organisation’s Policy Integration and Statistics Department. Also, the jobs they hold tend to be lower in status than those of men, and thus the first to be eliminated.

• The author of the position paper “Asia in the Global Economic Crisis: Impacts and Responses from a Gender Perspective”, King Dejardin warns that policy makers risk “wiping out a generation of hard-won gains in pay equity and workplace equality” if they do not take into account the gender differences in the impact of the economic crisis.

• She notes that during the 1997 economic crisis, 95% of garment industry layoffs in Thailand were of women. In the South Korean financial sector, 86% of those made redundant were women.

• Efforts to stimulate economies and save jobs will disproportionately involve infrastructure plans, King Dejardin adds, which mean men will get the bulk of the employment.

• Instead, she argues, the concept of what are public works should be expanded, to incorporate social services, health care, education, child and youth development. Economic and fiscal stimulus packages must include support for microfinance — which helps women start businesses.

Amelita King Dejardin’s commentary