Women Worldwide Work Harder for Less, Study Says

The problem of women having to dress the kids, wash the clothes, cook the meals, make the beds and take out the garbage--all before they go to work to earn less than men--is a worldwide inequity, according to an International Labor Organization report.

Nearly everywhere in the world, women work harder and earn less than men, and the gap in many countries is widening, the report by the U.N. agency said.

Women work more hours a week, including housework, than men in every part of the world except North America and Australia, the report estimates.

They work the hardest in Africa. The report estimates that African women work 67 hours a week, compared to 53 for men. In Asia, women work 62 hours while men average 48 hours a week.

In North America and Australia, men work 49 hours a week, while women work 47.5, the report said.

In Western Europe, women average 48 hours, men 43; Japan’s women work 56 hours and men 54; in Latin America, women work 60 hours to 54 for men.

Australian women are at the top of the pay equality scale, with salaries increasing from 86% of men’s in 1980 to nearly 88% in 1988, the most recent year for which figures were available.

U.S. women’s salaries increased from 60% of men’s to 65% over about the same period, and Canadian women increased their salaries by nearly the same percentages.

Women lost ground in Japan, with earnings falling from 53.8% in 1980 to 50.7% in 1988. A seniority wage system in Japan favors men, and women are concentrated in lower-paid jobs, the report said. The big Japanese company Toshiba at one time had only 10 women among its 7,000 managers, the report says.