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12. What Matters for Urban Women’s Work?
- Author:
- Shamindra Nath Roy and Partha Mukhopadhyay
- Publication Date:
- 01-2020
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Centre for Policy Research, India
- Abstract:
- India is one of the lowest globally in terms of female labour force participation (FLFP), ranking only better than Pakistan in South Asia. While the decline in FLFP in rural areas is starkly visible, the urban FLFP has been consistently low since the 1980s despite higher economic growth and increasing level of education among females. The economic cost of such low FLFP (16.8%) is huge and if, for instance, it could be raised to the level of FLFP in China (61.5%), it has the potential to raise India’s GDP up to 27%. This paper attempts to investigate the structural deficiencies behind this consistently low urban FLFP through a variety of perspectives, ranging from measuring the complexity of women’s work to the implications of caste, location and family structure. It finds factors like presence of female-friendly industries, provision of regular salaried jobs and policies that cater to women’s needs to work near home like availability of part-time work, can improve the situation, though prejudices arising from patriarchy require to be addressed to make these measures truly transformative and not palliative.
- Topic:
- Education, Gender Issues, Labor Issues, Women, Inequality, and Economy
- Political Geography:
- South Asia and India
13. What Has Changed in the Turkish Coal Mining Industry Five Years After the Soma Mine Disaster?
- Author:
- H. Sebnem Düzgün
- Publication Date:
- 02-2020
- Content Type:
- Special Report
- Institution:
- Georgetown Journal of International Affairs
- Abstract:
- The Soma Mine Disaster (SMD) was the most massive mine disaster of the twenty-first century, with 301 fatalities. This was due to a mine fire in an underground coal mine. Although mine fires usually do not cause a large number of casualties in comparison with other explosions in underground coal mines, the SMD has an anomaly. The cause of the mine fire has not been precisely determined, though various groups of experts developed several hypotheses. Most of the fatalities were due to an inadequate safety culture, unstructured organizational and human performance, and improper decision-making and risk perception during the emergency management. So far, only minimal steps have been taken to improve the safety standards of the coal mines. Larger improvements are necessary to address the variety of factors that contributed to the disaster.
- Topic:
- Disaster Relief, Science and Technology, Natural Resources, Labor Issues, Regulation, and Mining
- Political Geography:
- Turkey and Middle East
14. The Gender of Work
- Author:
- Gala Díaz Langou, Gimena de León, José Florito, Florencia Caro Sachetti, Alejandro Biondi, and Matilde Karczmarczyk
- Publication Date:
- 01-2020
- Content Type:
- Special Report
- Institution:
- Center for the Implementation of Public Policies for Equity and Growth (CIPPEC)
- Abstract:
- The Gender of Work is the result of a joint initiative between CIPPEC, the International Labor Organization, UN Women and the United Nations Development Program. It focuses on diagnosing the gender gaps that violate the economic rights of women in Argentina, and to present policy suggestions for removing the obstacles that make it impossible for women’s trajectories in the labor market to be substantively equal to those of men. In the Latin American context specifically (but not exclusively), there are three key issues that public policies should take into account when attempting to close the gender gaps in the exercise of economic autonomy. These can be summarized as (1) a human-rights perspective on substantive gender equality, that connects it with sustainable development priorities as described in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and approved by the United Nations in 2015; (2) the acknowledgement of intersectionality and interculturality when tackling discriminative societal structures and (3) the principle of integrality as fundamental to the achievement of physical, decision-making, and economic autonomy.
- Topic:
- Gender Issues, Labor Issues, Women, and Labor Policies
- Political Geography:
- Argentina and Latin America
15. Pandemic, informality, and vulnerability: Impact of COVID-19 on livelihoods in India
- Author:
- Surbhi Kesar, Rosa Abraham, Rahul Lahoti, Paaritosh Nath, and Amit Basole
- Publication Date:
- 06-2020
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Centre for Sustainable Employment, Azim Premji University
- Abstract:
- We analyze findings from a large-scale survey of around 5000 respondents across 12 states of India to study the impact of COVID-19 pandemic containment measures (lockdown) on employment, livelihoods, food security and access to relief measures. We find a massive increase in unemployment, an equally dramatic fall in earnings among informal workers, large increases in food insecurity, depletion of savings and patchy coverage of relief measures. Two-thirds of our respondents lost work. The few informal workers who were still employed during the lockdown experienced more than a fifty percent drop in their earnings. Even among regular wage workers, half received either no salary or reduced salary during the lockdown. Almost eighty percent of surveyed households experienced a reduction in their food intake and a similar percentage of urban households did not have enough money to pay next month's rent. We also use a set of logistic regressions to identify how employment loss and food intake varies with individual and householdlevel characteristics. We find that migrants and urban Muslims are significantly worse off with respect to employment and food security. Among employment categories, self-employed workers were more food secure. The Public Distribution System (PDS) system was seen to have the widest reach among social security measures. However, even under PDS, 16 percent of vulnerable urban households did not have access to government rations. Further, half of the respondents reported not receiving any cash transfers (state or central). We conclude that much more is needed in the way of direct fiscal support that has been announced thus far by state and central governments in India.
- Topic:
- Economics, Labor Issues, Employment, Unemployment, Pandemic, and COVID-19
- Political Geography:
- India
16. Occupational change, artificial intelligence and the geography of EU labour markets
- Author:
- Sybrand Brekelmans and Georgios Petropoulos
- Publication Date:
- 06-2020
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Bruegel
- Abstract:
- From 2002 up to 2009, the economies of European Union countries went through a skill upgrading, rather than a polarisation between low-skill and high-skill jobs. After 2009, this changed, with declining real wages and a significant increase in the share of workers in low-skill jobs. This assessment evaluates these changes in connection with labour market variables, population densities and the emergence of machine learning and artificial intelligence.
- Topic:
- Labor Issues, European Union, Economy, Innovation, Artificial Intelligence, Strategic Competition, and Geography
- Political Geography:
- Europe
17. A new policy toolkit is needed as countries exit COVID-19 lockdowns
- Author:
- Olivier Blanchard, Thomas Philippon, and Jean Pisani-Ferry
- Publication Date:
- 06-2020
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- Bruegel
- Abstract:
- Most governments have taken measures to protect vulnerable workers and firms from the worst effects of the sudden drop in activity related to COVID-19. But as lockdowns are lifted, the focus must shift, and governments in advanced economies must design measures that will limit the pain of adjustment.
- Topic:
- Government, Labor Issues, Economy, and COVID-19
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
18. Returning to work during the pandemic
- Author:
- Michael Shoebridge
- Publication Date:
- 04-2020
- Content Type:
- Special Report
- Institution:
- Australian Strategic Policy Institute
- Abstract:
- National Cabinet is meeting to begin the pathway to get Australia back to work and school. That's while we are still in the midst of 'flattening the curve' and in a world without a vaccine or even effective therapeutic treatment to reduce death rates from the virus. So, how might Australia return to work without getting back on the elevator of exponentially growing infection and deaths? This Strategic Insight sketches out that path, with the answers involving mass testing, and companies funded and supported to do rapid testing, data collection and analysis. It will rely on smartphone apps for data collection to enable outbreak suppression and contact tracing. Critically, national cabinet must communicate how this new approach will work alongside the existing social distancing restrictions, which will need to remain in place for months to come. The hygiene and distancing protocols for this 'return to work' will be easier for advanced manufacturing workplaces, it turns out, as those workplaces are already pretty socially distant, with low levels of staffing and high levels of automation. A lot of construction work is mainly outdoors and is also now more mechanised than labour intensive. And a regime of testing workers on arrival, combined with strict workplace health protocols, will probably be feasible for many other manufacturing, large-scale agricultural and white collar workplaces—including our parliaments. Small businesses will struggle in the absence of almost ubiquitous community testing, unless ‘precinct’ approaches provide testing and health hygiene for facilities that house groups of such businesses (shopping centres and business parks are examples). This diversity across workplaces and organisations means that taking the path advocated here—tests, data, apps and surveillance—will involve a clear and pervasive communication effort between our leaders and our people. Confusion about who’s in, who’s out, which businesses can start planning to get back into operation in facilities now closed and which must stick to what they have now will unravel this approach. And being able to explain how the health surveillance approach has been designed to work with our democratic society and to not be a part of any future national security surveillance powers will be key to bringing different parts of our population along. Again, this communication task is a job for the national cabinet.
- Topic:
- Health, Labor Issues, Pandemic, and COVID-19
- Political Geography:
- Australia and Australia/Pacific
19. Uyghurs for sale: 'Re-education', forced labour and surveillance beyond Xinjiang
- Author:
- Vicky Xiuzhong Xu, Danielle Cave, James Leibold, Kelsey Munro, and Nathan Ruser
- Publication Date:
- 03-2020
- Content Type:
- Special Report
- Institution:
- Australian Strategic Policy Institute
- Abstract:
- The Chinese government has facilitated the mass transfer of Uyghur and other ethnic minority1 citizens from the far west region of Xinjiang to factories across the country. Under conditions that strongly suggest forced labour, Uyghurs are working in factories that are in the supply chains of at least 82 well-known global brands in the technology, clothing and automotive sectors, including Apple, BMW, Gap, Huawei, Nike, Samsung, Sony and Volkswagen. This report estimates that more than 80,000 Uyghurs were transferred out of Xinjiang to work in factories across China between 2017 and 2019, and some of them were sent directly from detention camps.2 The estimated figure is conservative and the actual figure is likely to be far higher. In factories far away from home, they typically live in segregated dormitories,3 undergo organised Mandarin and ideological training outside working hours,4 are subject to constant surveillance, and are forbidden from participating in religious observances.5 Numerous sources, including government documents, show that transferred workers are assigned minders and have limited freedom of movement.6 China has attracted international condemnation for its network of extrajudicial ‘re-education camps’ in Xinjiang.7 This report exposes a new phase in China’s social re-engineering campaign targeting minority citizens, revealing new evidence that some factories across China are using forced Uyghur labour under a state-sponsored labour transfer scheme that is tainting the global supply chain.
- Topic:
- Human Rights, Science and Technology, Labor Issues, Minorities, Business, and Uyghurs
- Political Geography:
- China, Asia, and Australia
20. COVID-19 Impact on West African Value Chains
- Author:
- Loïc Bisson
- Publication Date:
- 06-2020
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- Clingendael Netherlands Institute of International Relations
- Abstract:
- Countries in West Africa were quick to take strong prevention and mitigation measures to stem the spread of COVID-19. But border closure, curfew, market closure and limited internal movement already impact key value chains in the region and threaten livelihoods. It risks lowering decent working conditions and labour rights and increasing child labour and gender violence. Informal, migrant and female workers are especially at risk and are likely to take the brunt of the economic downturn. Disruptions in the food value chain also endangers food security in the region. Instability in West Africa threatens both European and Dutch economic, security and geopolitical interests. By virtue of being involved in various West African value chains, European and Dutch consumers and companies bear both leverage and responsibilities in regard to secure livelihoods, good working conditions free of gender violence and respect for labour rights in West Africa.
- Topic:
- Labor Issues, Fragile States, Global Value Chains, and COVID-19
- Political Geography:
- Africa and West Africa