Study sheds light on wage gaps, stereotypes ahead of Women’s Day

AMMAN — Improving labour policies that protect basic rights is an effective way to increase women’s economic participation, Jordan Labour Watch said in a position paper issued on the occasion of International Women’s Day.

Women’s economic participation decreased from 14.2 per cent in 2008 to 13.2 per cent in 2019, according to the paper, which added that only 28 per cent of all Social Security Corporation (SSC) subscribers were women, citing data from the end of 2018.

Affiliated with the Phenix Centre for Economic & Informatics Studies, the Jordan Labour Watch said that this year’s Women’s Day “comes at a time when Jordanian labour legislation has undergone amendments in the previous year that diminished basic labour rights”.

“This includes weakening the abilities of workers, men and women, from participating in policy-making, through imposing restrictions on unions and weakening social protections for young workers,” the paper said.

Citing an example, the report said that in spite of “formal amendments to the Labour Law” related to building day cares for the children of labourers within specified conditions, indicators show that the government “is still unable to enforce the law”.

The paper claimed that this is the reason behind the government’s amendments to the SSC Law, which transfers the “burden” of constructing day cares to the corporation’s fund. 

The unemployment rate among women reached 27.5 per cent in the third quarter of 2019, while the rate stood at 17.1 per cent among men in the same period, the paper said.

The wage gap between men and women also continued to increase, according to SSC statistics for 2018 cited in the paper, revealing that the average salary for men stands at JD544 while that of women stands at JD475, a 12.7-per-cent gap. 

“Labour policies played a key factor in women’s preference to work in the public sector, as work conditions in the sector are stronger than those in the private sector in regards to salaries, social protection, days off, working hours and stability,” the paper said.

It added that the government is still “increasing the gap” between the two sectors, citing the postponement of raising the minimum wage, which the paper said is still “way under the poverty line and much less than the minimum wage in the public sector”.

The paper urged Parliament to adopt amendments that ensure basic labour rights, especially for women, preventing all sorts of violence and sexual harassment according to the International Labour Organisation’s agreement No. 190, which rejects all types of violence and sexual harassment. 

 “The low participation rate reflects the economy’s inability to invest properly in women, which impacts the overall economic growth in regards to benefitting from women’s expertise,” economist Husam Ayesh told The Jordan Times over the phone. 

“There are also problems related to the permeating culture and standardising the role of women,” Ayesh said.

Ayesh said that solutions include a work-from-home approach that can be implemented for women to have a more flexible work experience, while also working to reduce the wage gap between men and women. 

“In the same way that the government provides investors with incentives and exemptions, the same can be applied to women by exempting them from certain taxes and fees… especially in their early work stages, which can help them better integrate in the labour market,” the economist said.

He also highlighted the wage gap between the public and private sectors in spite of employees being subjected to the same “tax burdens”. 

“The chores women perform at home should be considered as part of their overall labour, regardless of the sector they work on, and they should be allowed to leave work an hour earlier than the set times, for example, counting any role they perform at home as part of the economic process,” Ayesh said.