Female condition

Women and work

Indicating of equality between man and women

The women in general are touched hard than the men by the problems of development.

The UNDP (Program of the United Nations for the development) measurement that with two compound indexes of human development (IDH):

ISDH : sexo-specific indicator of human development.

it acts of IDH separately calculated for the male population and the female population, with a factor of correction to represent the fact that the lifespan of the women is naturally higher. Sexual discrimination is regarded as extreme when the female ISDH is lower of twenty points to the IDH. With this calculation, the nine countries where sexual discrimination is most extreme are: the Yemen (- 58), the Saudi Arabia (- 35), Oman (- 32), the Guinea-Bissau (- 31), the Sudan (- 29), the Syria (- 23), the Libya (- 22), Belize (- 21), the Algérie (- 20).

IPF : indicator of the participation of the women.

it acts of an indicator primarily directed towards the participation of the women in the decision-making process economic.

There does not exist linear relation between these two criteria of development. Although the first can be high, the second can be weak as much. It is the case of Japan or Italy for which indicators IDH and ISDH are relatively high compared to other countries (they are classified respectively 9th and 12th for Japan, 21e and 21e for Italy, according to the report/ratio of the development program of Nation-Plain the 2003), whereas their IPF are weak with the sights of their IDH (classified respectively 38 and 32e) (i.e.: weak participation of the women in the decision-making process economic).

As for France, if its classification ISDH is better than its classification IDH (15th and 16th), its classification IPF is not established, for lack of sufficient data.

Discrimination

Wage difference and “female” professions

The wages of the women are often lower, at identical station, and the exercise of the to be able in company is too often the prerogative of the men. Lastly, in policy, the women are definitely less present, except in the Scandinavian countries. This imbalance gave place to the concept of parity.

The traditionally female professions are clearly devalued. The traditionally male professional sectors, where the women started to enter massively during the 20th century, were little by little deserted by them, and thus convey now a devalued image and consequently more and more badly are remunerated.

In many fields, the modern Western companies remain sexists. A certain number of professional sectors or professions remains almost exclusively the field of a sex or other. In the work world the disparity remains immense: the employment opportunities are less for the women and the larger Précarité for them, and they too often must, professionally to succeed, to adapt to the male model and to adopt of them the values of competitiveness and aggressiveness.

Chronology of the fight for the professional equality in France

1907 : a law authorizes the married women to be laid out freely of their Salaire
1908: the law grants a Maternity leave eight weeks, without wages
1920: the women can adhere to a trade union without the authorization of their husband.
1928 : maternity leave, with full wages, two months in the Public office
1942: the widowed women can work, even if their husbands work already, with the proviso of not causing a dismissal
1945: suppression of the concept of “female wages”. The concept “with equal work, equal wages” is registered in the legislation
1965: reform matrimonial modes: the women can exert a work without the authorization of their husband and profit from the welfare benefits
1971: introduction of the compensated maternity leave with 90 % for all
1972: a law founds the principle of equal pay between the men and women; first of a series of laws never really applied to the subject
1974: law allowing the abortion thanks to Simone Veil.
1975 : law prohibiting any discrimination in the public office
1977: suppression of the single allowance of wages
1982: the women of tradesmen and craftsmen can choose between three statutes: united collaborator, paid or associated
1983: law on the wage equality between men and women, very little applied
1984: the parental leave is opened with each parent, with the choice
1986: Circular ministerial supporting the feminization of the technical terms: artisane, écrivaine…
1987: easing of the restrictions on the night-work
1992: law against the Sexual harassment
2001: reinforcement of the law of 1983 on the professional equality
2005: new law on the professional equality, without constraining criterion nor sanction, in the event of non-observance of the objectives.

The inequality of the sexes in the house work

See also: History of the femmes#La modern and contemporary period

This disparity exists as much in the family and domestic world. The report/ratio of UNO for the Conference of Beijing in 1995 showed that the women are largely victims of the “double day”. On average, they devote to family and domestic, “invisible” work and not remunerated, much more time than their companions. This office plurality of labor carried out outside and with residence leads the women to work on average 13 % more than the men. The world mass of the only female house work, free and essential to the operation of a company, represented, in 1995, eleven billion dollars and the 2/3 of the only female work. The women thus work more and gain less than the men. In the Western post-industrial companies, at the “double day” comes to be added it “triples presence”, since, in addition to with their work and their hearth, the women must frequently undertake the stripped elderly. This general tendency seems to worsen since 1995, with the Chômage and the Précarité.

It is however true that those which have the chance to have a correctly remunerated employment and to perceive an alimony regularly see the departure man to reduce it their workload domestic six hours weekly.

Inequalities in education

See also: History of the education of the girls

Many stereotypes concerning the education of the young girls remained the same ones during the last decades and evolved/moved only rather recently as for the domestic task sharing: more half of the girls of more than eleven years dedicate daily at least an hour to it whereas 30% of the boys devote to it only less than one half an hour per day.

Equal age, it is generally requested more from the girls that with the boys, and those are charged with more responsibilities within the family: domestic menus services and work, races or food preparations, guard of the brothers and sisters younger in the absence of baby-sitter (personal almost exclusively female) if the parents work.

However, they succeed overall better at the school and are statistically more powerful and more graduate. That is however not translated in the professional life where the proportions are not only reversed but largely amplified with the detriment of the women. The school under-performance of the boys emerges from now on. Freer to play, less family responsibilities their incumbent, they tend to feel more easily exonerated from the school work.

The electronic game is more offered to the boys, which tends to inculcate to the girls a certain reserve vis-a-vis the objects such as the computers.

But certainly that is not always the case in all the families. There is more in addition to boys who make house works, but it is true that it is still a small percentage in comparison with the girls.

Difficulties, discriminations and handicaps

The Maternité remains a major handicap in the female professional life. Maternity are indeed perceived per many employers as an additional cause of absence which, for a given station, their fact of preferring a man. However, other obstacles of more opaque nature contribute to these difficulties. In many cases, it is not so much voluntary discrimination on behalf of their colleagues or higher male who returns concerned today. On the one hand, the work world is structured in a too rigid way in spite of some laws allowing certain time installations; considering the house works which fall to them and the dependant childrens, it is difficult for the women to adapt to it. In addition, it seems that the women do not have certain social resources necessary in a strategy of project and career which all are based on mechanisms of co-optation on behalf of the male group dominating, often reticent to accept their female colleagues, or quite simply because they expect that those react like them. Two of these basic mechanisms were analyzed by the sociologists:

the effect “Token”:

This one analyzes the general rules of the stratification of the capacity, according to the Token-ring screens traversing the ring in a direction which is always the same one. It seems that the women tend to assume behaviors which are not natural for them, and which long play in their discredit, when they come into contact with a primarily male medium. Feeling really accepted but not confronted with the pressures of the male group dominating waiting they that they change their manner of being, a great number of women react by two types of defensive reactions which play against them: on the one hand hyperconformism and all zeal of the neophyte who makes some to them make of too much so that they are vassalized quickly, or the running away in “invisibility”, seeking to be more “neutral” possible so that one realizes the least possible of their presence; passer by unperceived it to them will hardly be proposed a more interesting work, even if they have all the capacities to do it.

the effect “Matthieu”:

It draws its name from the evangelist who reports the words of Jesus Christ according to which those which have the faith will increase their grace and those which do not have it will be precipitated in the eternal damnation. In fact, those which “have” (capacity) are the men and those which “do not have” are the women. According to research of the sociologist Judith Lorber on this subject, it seems well that, when the women lose the discussion thread of the evolution of career (often because of a maternity), they accumulate the disadvantages and only leave themselves very with difficulty this vicious circle. Excluded from the virtuous circle of prestige and the capacity, they often find for the remainder of their life condemned to employment subordinates little gratifiants and little remunerated.

^{“has that which has, one will give; with that which does not have, one will remove even what it has” , according to the parabola of the talents, Évangiles of St Matthieu 25/29.}

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