PTI, UNITED NATIONS: Women are still under-represented at the top positions and face “motherhood wage penalty” globally, according to a UN report which said in India only about 10 per cent of managers with children under six years of age are women as compared to nearly 90 per cent of their male counterparts.
As the world marked International Women’s Day, the report titled ‘A Quantum leap for gender equality: For a better future of work for all’ by International Labour Organization (ILO) said women’s job opportunities have barely improved since the early 1990s.
“Women are still under-represented at the top, a situation that has changed very little in the last 30 years,” according to the report. “This is despite that fact that they are likely to be better educated than their male counterparts … education is not the main reason for lower employment rates and lower pay of women, but rather that women do not receive the same dividends for education as men.”
There is also a ‘motherhood leadership penalty’: only 25 per cent of managers with children under six years of age are women. Women’s share rises to 31 per cent for managers without young children, the report said.
In India, women make up about 10.2 per cent of managers with children under the age of six and 16.3 per cent with no children. In contrast, 89.8 per cent managers with children under six years of age are men while this percentage is 83.7 for men with no children.
