Women in labour markets: Measuring progress and identifying challenges
The ILO Key Indicators of the Labour Market (KILM) database is a comprehensive collection of labour market information that “can serve as a tool in monitoring and assessing many of the pertinent issues related to the functioning of labour markets”.9 One such issue is equity in the labour market. The producers of the KILM acknowledge in the “Guide to understanding the KILM” that women face specific challenges in attaining decent work. What we wish to uncover in this report is how well one can paint a realistic portrait of the female labour market today and identify trends over time using the available KILM indicators. Does the KILM offer a wide enough umbrella for measuring the utilization of labour, particularly female labour, and for showcasing the characteristics of labour markets, especially as they differ between men and women? The short answer is yes.
Twelve KILM indicators serve as the barometer from which the analysis of employment trends for women has been built in this report. There are certainly other indicators mentioned throughout the report that could strengthen the analysis, indicators that are “new” and not yet available for a significant number of countries (informal employment, for example; see section 3.3.4) or indicators that are widely available at the country level but are not yet harvested into an ILO database (employment by occupation, for example; see box 8). But such indicators would only add to the strength of the findings highlighted throughout the report and summarized in the following section. Using the available, sex-disaggregated KILM indicators, we are already able to demonstrate how women engage in labour markets and how their unique values and constraints result in an overall portrait of gender inequality in the world of work (as summarized in the executive summary).
Source:ILO
