The Women Labor Force and Its Role in Globalization

The women labor force and its role in globalization

How far is the process of equality among genders in the working world advanced? Are women really equally treated when it comes to wages and working chances? Is the employment situation for women really fair or are there obstacles making it harder for women to enter the labor work force? How hard is for women to get top managerial jobs? Are there are any barriers which make this process more difficult? These are all questions that many women today have to confront themselves with when entering the global labor work force. In my paper I shall, by means of examples, firstly analyze some particular cases in large companies and organizations to find out how fair the employment situation for women really is and secondly interpret how globalization might affect the employment possibilities.

Women in the UN

When looking at a report from Kofi Annan, Secretary-General of the UN, the proportion of women in the UN at the levels in the Secretariat, with contracts for one year or longer, rose 1.7 % last year to 37.4 % on the end of June of this year. Furthermore, 83.3 % of staff at the lowest professional level, called the P-1, was made up by women but only 16.7 % of the highest staff level, the Under-Secretaries-General, was formed by women. What are the reasons for that? Is it more difficult for women to get employed at the highest staff level? What the report in general showed was that the analysis of the longer-term trends portrayed a picture of uneven progress in women’s representation at all levels. The reasons for that included unacknowledged biases among hiring managers who are not being held accountable. Moreover, another cause related was that the expectations were that managers must work long hours and always be available thereby fostering imbalances between work and home life. In addition, jobs for spouses of UN employees are not always easy to find in UN host countries according to the report and permission to work is sometimes slow in coming, making transfers impossible for some families. Like for every other company or organization the goal should be to have evenly distributed work chances for both genders which should also be reflected in the employment policy of the company. The annual growth rate towards this evenly distributed employment goal in the