Repost: Weighed Down

In India, women (who make up about 50% of construction workers there) are told that they "aren't smart enough" to do the skilled construction work. In the United States, women are told they "aren't strong enough" to really do construction.

Do all the smart women live in the United States and all the strong women live in India? We think not.

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The HinduPhoto: Mohammed Yousuf

The construction industry in India has always been male-dominated, with men doing the more skilled jobs and women reduced to unskilled labour. Women are involved mostly in physical work such as carrying construction material, breaking bricks and rocks, cleaning, etc. However, women construction labourers often face discrimination in wage payment. It has been found that women workers are usually paid 40 to 60 per cent less than men; sometimes even below the minimum wages set by the government.

Apart from that, there are hardly separate facilities like toilets, first-aid and child care for the women workforce at construction sites. Women labourers work under serious life and health risks with no safety gear and a polluted environment.

In the photograph, the camera captures women toiling at a construction site in Hyderabad.

Visit http://www.thehindu.com to view the original article.

Repost: Women to Storm Construction Sector

Interesting article on closing the wage disparity gap among women in India's construction industry.

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It’s rare to see women in the construction sector doing skilled jobs. You often find them carrying heavy headloads at construction sites. They are also being paid very low wages. But with the Kudumbasree Mission’s project to train women in construction and maintenance work, things may change soon.

Within three months, 150 skilled masons, 15 plumbers and 15 electricians will be trained to take up jobs at various construction sites.“The idea is to help women earn more with skills that are much in demand in this field,” Tani Thomas, the Kudumbasree district co-ordinator, told The Hindu.

The unskilled women workers in the construction sector are now being paid only Rs. 300 per day while their men counterparts demand Rs.500- Rs. 600 a day. The wage goes up to Rs.700 for skilled work.

“We are already receiving many enquiries about skilled workforce. Equipping women with skills will help them earn at least Rs.700 a day,” Ms. Thomas added.

The Rs.1 crore project is being implemented with the financial assistance from Housing and Urban Development Corporation Limited (Hudco) as part of their corporate social responsibility.

The Kudumbasree has set up a women’s team of 10 engineering graduates and 20 civil diploma holders for the project.

The training period is three months. The Kudumbasree mission will provide tool kits for the women labourers. It will also come up with an equipment lending station. “The equipments would be available not only for the women we train but for others as well,” said Ms. Thomas.

KITCO Limited has provided the training capsules for the women and an NGO, Jyothi Jeevika, from Kottayam will be training women in masonry at Manjummel in five days a week. They will get a stipend of Rs.350 a day.

After the training programme, the all-women team will be engaged in small construction projects for a year.

Minister for Panchayats and Social Welfare M. K. Muneer will inaugurate the programme at the Thrikkakara Community Hall on Monday.

View the original article at http://www.thehindu.com.

Repost: Wage Gap Persists in Most Occupations, Sales Jobs Worst Paying for Women

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Apr 09, 2013

Washington, DC–According to new analysis by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research (IWPR), women earn less than men in nearly all of the 114 most common occupations. Women’s wages are lower than men’s even in occupations dominated by men and women have the worst earnings compared to men in sales occupations, such as insurance and retail sales.

Occupations dominated by women provide lower earnings: Four of the ten most common occupations for women, ‘maids and housekeeping cleaners, ‘waitresses,’ ‘cashiers and ‘nursing, psychiatric and home health aides,’ have median earnings for a full-time week of work that are insufficient to lift a family of four out of poverty. Women are more than twice as likely as men to work in occupations with poverty wages

“The most common occupations for women show how far women have come, with good earnings in many occupations,” said Dr. Heidi Hartmann, President of IWPR. “But they also show the desperate, and all too common, problem of low pay for many women.”

Women ‘insurance sales agents’ face the largest gender wage gap; women’s median weekly earnings of $641 are only 64.3 percent of men’s median weekly earnings of $1026. ‘Retails sales persons,’ among the twenty largest occupations for both women and men, have an earnings ratio for women of 64.3 percent. Latina women’s median earnings in sales occupations are only 45.5 percent of white men’s earnings, the group with the highest median earnings in all sales occupations.

“Year after year, it is occupations with high commission payments that do worst for women,” said Ariane Hegewisch, IWPR Study Director. “Given lack of pay transparency, we have to rely on lawsuit evidence showing that women are not less likely to work hard in these jobs, but are less likely to be given the higher earning accounts or work in the big buck sales departments.”

The fact sheet is updated annually by IWPR and provides median earnings for the twenty largest occupations for women and men and distributions across occupational groups by gender and race, based on weekly earnings data from the U.S. Department of Labor’s Current Population Survey.


The Institute for Women's Policy Research (IWPR) is a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization that conducts rigorous research and disseminates its findings to address the needs of women and their families, promote public dialogue, and strengthen communities and societies.

View the original press release and contact IWPR at http://www.iwpr.org/.