Impact of the economic crisis on women

• Women constitute around 60–80 percent of the export manufacturing workforce in the developing world, a sector the World Bank expects to shrink significantly during the economic crisis 1.

• The global economic crisis is expected to plunge a further 22 million women into unemployment, which would lead to a female unemployment rate of 7.4 percent (versus 7 percent of male unemployment) 2.

• Women are concentrated in insecure jobs in the informal sector with low income and few rights; they tend to have few skills and only basic education. They are the first to be fired.

• The global vulnerable employment rate is expected to range between 50.5–54.7 percent for women, compared to a range of 47.2–51.8 percent for men 3.

• 80 percent of women workers are considered to be in vulnerable employment in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.

• 700,000 clothing and textile workers in India lost their jobs in 2008 4.

• More than half of the 40,000 jobs lost in the Philippines come from export processing zones, where 80 percent of workers are women 5.

• Sri Lanka and Cambodia have each lost 30,000 mostly female garment industry jobs to date — in both countries, the garment industry accounts for at least half of export earnings 6.

• Nicaragua’s export processing zone, where female labour is prevalent, lost 16,000 jobs in 2008 7.

• Growth collapses have a direct impact on development. For instance, in times of crises parents are likely to take their children, often girls, out of school and send them to work. Or they might be forced to feed their children less nutritious food or be unable to take them to the doctor when they are ill.

• In Sri Lanka, food took up to a quarter of migrant women workers’ wages in 2008, so women since then have reduced their meals from three to two times a day and/or reduced the quality of their diet in response to declining wages and dramatic increases in the costs of basic necessities.

• Female garment workers on abysmal wages in Bangladesh are still reeling from last year’s food crisis — and the situation can only worsen as the effects of the economic crisis kick in later this year.

Women Migrant Workers

• Migration is crucial to development: last year, migrants worldwide sent US$305 billion home to developing countries — three times the volume of aid 8. Remittances from migrant workers are an important source of national income in countries like the Philippines and Bangladesh, and in Central America.

• Women constitute 50 percent or more of migrant workers in Asia and Latin America.

• While women increasingly migrate alone or as the primary income earners, female international migration is often under-reported.

• In Cambodia, more than 90 percent of garment workers are women and almost all of them are migrants from rural provinces who support their families back home 9]

• Women who have migrated to cities in their own country and abroad to support themselves and their families are being hit hard by the economic crisis. Female wages are an important source of income for families who depend on their remittances to put food on the table and relatives through education.

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