On Women´s Day, statistics on labor show inequality
March 08, 2018 02h00 PM | Last Updated: March 09, 2018 05h23 PM
The statistics on the labor market point out that women do not benefit from the same conditions as men in a number of aspects, like earnings, formalization and availability of hours to work. On the International Women´s Day, the data related to the fourth quarter of 2017 of the Continuous National Household Sample Survey - PNAD-C confirm that there is still a hard way to go towards gender equality.
Of the 40.2 million workers, 24.3% had completed higher education, whereas this proportion was of 14.6% among employed men. Nevertheless, women who work earn 24.4% less, on average, than men.
The survey points out that 6.0% of men who work were employers, while the proportion of employed women in this position was roughly half of it: 3.3%. The percentage of women working as assisting family workers (3.6%), characterized by not earning any wage, was much higher than men (1.5%).
The Continuous PNAD also points out that the share of women surpasses that of men in some jobs culturally known as "feminine" and associated with lower wages. The biggest gap is found in the category of domestic workers, in which 92.3% are women. Yet they also prevail in the magisterium, wards and social assistance. In this regard, the share of women (25.2%) was quite higher than that of men (10.9%) in the sector of public administration, defense and social security, education, health and social services.
Typically masculine, activities like civil construction and transportation, storage and mailing employed 13% and 7.8% of the employed men, respectively. The percentages of the employed feminine population in these activities were small: 0.5% and 1.2%, respectively.
Seven in ten domestic workers without formal contract
Concerning formal contracts, the statistics are more favorable to women than men: nearly 80% of the workers in the private sector had a formal contract, whereas the percentage was of 72% among men. The situation was quite different among the 5.9 million domestic workers, of whom 71.6% did not have a formal contract. 57.7% of men in this activity worked without a formal contract.
Women dedicated 18 weekly hours to take care of persons or household tasks, 73% more time than men (10.5 hours). That is a entrenched characteristic of our society, which leads most women to look for part-time jobs, as a way to conciliate work and household tasks. Therefore, the percentage of women that worked 39 hours or less per week (34.6%) was quite higher than that of men in this condition (19.1%) in the last quarter of 2017. According to Cimar Azeredo, IBGE coordinator of Labor and Income, teachers and telemarketers are in this situation.
As a result, women were about 54% of the 6.46 million underemployed workers – persons who work less than 40 weekly hours, but would like to work more. According to Cimar, an example of this situation "are women with a small child who would like to work more, but she cannot, since they don´t have anyone to leave the child".
