Widespread discrimination” “

In spite of the existence of numerous international conventions, discrimination between the sexes still persists, especially in the world of work. According to studies prepared by the International Labour Organization (ILO), it’s women who have most felt the negative effects caused by the globalization of the economy. Office staff and few executives. Over the last twenty years, the rate of women’s participation in the labour market has been constantly growing, so much so that we can speak of a phenomenon of “feminization” of the workforce and employment, at the world level. The growth has been stronger in countries such as Spain and the Netherlands, where women were less present in employment before. In the USA, in Canada and in the Nordic countries, women already represent approximately half of the working population, with percentages rising to over 70% of the workforce in some age groups. Women, however, remain very much in the minority in managerial or executive positions. They remain, for the most part, relegated to a narrow range of so-called “female” jobs (office staff, services, retailing and medium-level self-employment), in general less well paid and less prestigious than “male” jobs. According to the most recent data published by the ILO, only a percentage fluctuating between 1 and 3% of executive posts in the world’s biggest companies are occupied by women and only eight countries in the world have a woman as head of state. Only 13% of members of parliament in the world are women, and though 40% of members of trades-unions are women, only 1% of these succeed in obtaining a managerial post in their union. Low wages. There are four main factors of discrimination: the persistence of the disparities between the wages of men and women; inequality of access to permanent employment; the persistence and at times aggravation of professional inequality; and the growth of “ghost work” (invisible work, unpaid but economically necessary, in the domestic, agricultural and informal sectors). Throughout the world, in the private sector women are on average paid less than men, and no index leads one to predict that this inequality is diminishing to any significant degree. Undeniable progress has been achieved in the field of equality of wages over the last 40 years, but it has neither been universal nor sustained. The majority of women continue to earn approximately 50-80% of the wages of men. In the developed countries, the disparity varies between c.30 and 10%. The international Convention. The Convention on the elimination of every form of discrimination against women came into force on 3 September 1981 with its ratification by 168 countries. Since then, a Committee composed of 23 international experts has met twice a year to examine the reports submitted by the countries that ratified the Convention. Each country is free to submit a report or not: Saudi Arabia, for example, has never yet presented one. An additional protocol, which came into force on 7 March 2001, permits the Committee also to receive individual appeals against discrimination. 31 countries ratified this protocol, though it was only accepted with some reservations: some episcopates, for example, have pointed out that the protocol risks encouraging abortion. The more critical experts are not so enthusiastic either: the vast majority of people in the world do not benefit from the existing mechanisms. The Committee for human rights has registered 1,050 cases in 25 years, in spite of the 3,000 letters received each year. Only a percentage ranging between 10 and 15% of cases is taken into examination.