Extending Social Protection

Most workers in the world today have no form of social protection, aside from their ability to work and to save from their earnings. Workers employed in informal and casual work fall outside the scope of formal social protection schemes, and many, if not the majority of them, are women.

On the other hand, the massive incorporation of women into the labour market in recent times has called into question the existing social protection schemes. Most of the social security systems throughout the world were established on the assumption of the traditional family model, where the man was the sole breadwinner, and where the woman was in charge of domestic work and raising children.

Significant implications for social security and social protection derive from:

• Growing number of working women,
• changes in the composition and size of families,
• increase in numbers of female-headed households,
• radical shifts in values, particularly those which emphasize the importance of the individual

Provisions for a gender-sensitive extension of social protection should pay special attention to issues related to:

• human security;
• occupational health and safety;
• caring economy;
• challenge of global migration;
• pressing concern for HIV/AIDS.

Promoting Social Dialogue

Social dialogue is a means to promote decent work for men and women. The ILO tripartite structure offers a unique set-up for nurturing democratic life and promoting economic growth with social justice.
However the low number of women in key positions in representative bodies acts as a brake on the advancement of gender equality issues and on improving the situation of women in the world of work. Issues such as

• sex discrimination,
• equal pay,
• work and family responsibilities including childcare,
• working-time arrangements and
• sexual harassment

will only be put on the social dialogue agenda if enough women are parties to the dialogue. There is, therefore, a pressing need to increase the participation of women in existing social dialogue structures - unions, employers and their associations - still overwhelmingly dominated by men. The organizational, representation and negotiating capacity of women needs to be strengthened.

There is also a need to open up the dialogue to new actors:

• at the national level, to machineries for women's issues within the government, and
• at the local level, to activist groups of civil society with a first hand knowledge of women's problems and constraints.