PabsyLive: A Travelogue for International Women’s Day

Come on a virtual tour of Brazil, West Africa and Mongolia to gain insight into the world of women and work with World Bank Senior Director for Gender Caren Grown and vlogger Pabsy Pabalan-Mariano. Find out why increased education for women hasn’t translated into more, better, and better-paying jobs, the challenges faced by women who want to enter the work force and by those already working, and how men can help empower women.

#IWD2017 #BeBoldForChange

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TRANSCRIPT:

00:23 Okay, so we’ve heard about the gap between men and women when it comes to economic opportunities. Why is it that women struggle to get well-paying jobs and how can we have a more level playing field?

00:35 Oh, it’s such a good question. I have to say, it’s a really important question because, first of all, around the world women have made more progress in getting access to education. There’s a set of countries where women actually outnumber men in universities, but this additional education is not translating into labor market opportunities. So the question is why?

00:51 Well, there’s a few countries where labor force participation is low, and it may be a result of social norms, cultural constraints, it may be because the public sector, which is where women feel safe to go, is contracting and the private sector has not actually created enough jobs for women as well as for men. There are other explanations.

01:15 Men and women tend to predominate in somewhat sex-stereotypical occupations in industry, and this occupational segregation is actually a real constraint for women. The nature of that segregation really differs across countries, but it is true even in the U.S. and the Nordic countries, as well as in a country like Brazil or a country like Malawi.

01:38 So we have to figure out ways to break sex segregation and get women into higher value-added, higher-paying jobs and the Bank Group is doing some really interesting things to figure out how you crack that nut.

01:50 There are other issues that we’ve heard from women around the world that really matter – lack of child care, lack of services for women, particularly for early, for infants and young children, but as well at the other end of the lifecycle, elderly care, and it’s women of reproductive age who are largely responsible for this caregiving, and until we figure out the appropriate mix of the public and the private provision, but also getting men involved in caring for children will be important.

02:22 One other factor which I think is also really important, and again, we’ve heard this from around the world, is lack of safe affordable and accessible transport. The fact that women need to get to jobs, and sometimes the public system isn’t safe. You know, there’s a lot of harassment on buses or on the metro system.

02:44 There may not be access to services, the timetables of buses may not work for women who have to go drop a child off at childcare or do some shopping for the meals, to prepare the dinner, you know, those kinds of things. So we need to pay attention to all of those things, I think, to help women access more and better jobs.

03:02 And you also mentioned this a little bit earlier, so what can men and boys do to help?

03:10 Oh, I think there’s a huge role for men and boys and, by the way, I think working on gender equality is not a women’s issue. It’s a whole of society issue and everybody needs to engage, and I want to say that I think when men do engage, they benefit. It’s in their own best interest.

03:24 They benefit because their children benefit, because their spouses and partners and mothers and sisters and daughters benefit, and I think we need to just take this win-win view, not always win-win but mostly win-win.

03:40 So what can men do? Well, there’s wonderful examples from around the world, starting, for instance with the organization called Promundo in Brazil, of a movement of men to change the norm that it’s acceptable to beat or to abuse women, and this program is really wonderful. It’s at the community level.

04:03 It does intensive workshops not just for men but also with women as well. It’s a family-based approach, but there’s a lot of work to be done to understand how men can change their own attitudes and the fact that it’s not masculine to beat your wife. They also teach men parenting skills, and this model has spread to many countries around the world.

04:29 Male leaders have a huge role to play. In countries in West Africa, for instance, it’s elders and tribal leaders who have taken stands against female genital cutting, which is a norm. It’s very harmful to women and which is often enforced by women themselves, older women with younger women, but male leaders have essentially said we recognize the health, we recognize the consequences to this practice. So male leaders can really be champions for change.