Global Pressure to End Gender Bias
"Battle Underway Against Gender Discrimination in the Chinese Workplace." "Support Committee Backs Maquiladora Workers Fighting Pregnancy Discrimination." Such headlines from newspapers around the world tell the story of evolving rights for female workers. The end of sex discrimination, including sexual harassment, is still an unrealized goal, even in many countries where laws enforcing the concept were passed years ago. In recent years, though, efforts to end discrimination against women at work have attracted new advocates and have taken hold in places where they were heretofore less common, including many South American, African, Eastern European and Asian nations.
Global economic changes and the burgeoning number of multinational corporations have helped drive this trend, according to the international employment law firm Baker and McKenzie. Many of these businesses demand a ready supply of workers – often drawn across national boundaries - and try to adhere to certain global standards of conduct in the face of diverse national labor laws and social standards. In many countries, too, governments are coming to believe that women's participation in the workforce is crucial to economic growth and stability. Another factor is that labor unions and women's and human rights groups are bringing grassroots pressure to bear by informing women of their legal rights.
Those legal rights have been growing and evolving worldwide over the past 20 years, says legal expert Jane Aeberhard-Hodges of the Equality and Human Rights Coordination Branch of the International Labour Organization (ILO) in Geneva, Switzerland. There are now labor codes and laws on human rights and equality covering all aspects of gender-based discrimination – some created nationally, some required for membership in regional economic alliances like the European Union and the North Atlantic Free Trade Agreement, and some stemming from national adoption of international conventions. These days, most national sex discrimination laws demand equal pay for equal work, and many prohibit negative employment action against female employees who marry or become pregnant, though enforcement mechanisms in some nations are not particularly strong.
Organizations such as the ILO and the United Nations' Division on the Advancement of Women play an important role. Protocols and conventions passed and signed by the member states of these organizations set international standards of behavior that, even when not adhered to, are difficult to totally ignore. A new protocol to the United Nations' Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women took effect in December 2000. Signatories allow a U.N. committee to review women's claims of grave or systematic rights violations. Sixty-eight countries have signed it so far, and among the 28 that have ratified, or officially adopted, the protocol are Bangladesh, Azerbaijan, Bolivia, Costa Rica, Croatia, Kazakhstan, Mali, Namibia, Peru, Thailand and Uruguay.
In addition, several countries have recently passed specific laws that address sexual harassment as wrong and unacceptable in places of employment, according to Aeberhard-Hodges, though few international instruments take on harassment directly. Malaysia, South Korea and Japan are among those that now have such codes. Brazil and some other South American countries have ratified the Inter-American Convention to Prevent, Punish and Extinguish Violence Against Women, which requires adopting countries to put measures into place to extinguish sexual harassment in the workplace.
Baker and McKenzie's "Worldwide Guide to Termination, Employment Discrimination, and Workplace Harassment Laws" lists the specifics of national legislation in 31 countries that have laws banning sex discrimination and sexual harassment. Enforcement ranges from lenient fines to criminal penalties. In some places, corporations face liability; in others, individuals may be held personally liable.
Employers should remember that even in countries that ban sex bias, women continue to confront many forces that influence whether they actually receive equal treatment in the workplace. For example, traditional cultural mores and/or highly conservative religious views sometimes reinforce male domination and restrict women's chances for paid work and economic independence, observers from Human Rights Watch who monitor sex discrimination point out. This frequently occurs even in countries that pay lip service to equality and have laws supporting it. In other places, such as France, sexual interchanges considered culturally acceptable by many workers are now restricted under relatively new laws required by the European Union. According to an article in the New York Times, such imposition of new workplace standards is causing resentment and backlash in some countries where the regulations conflict with formerly accepted behavior. Coping with such backlashes may present people managers with particularly difficult challenges in coming years.
====================================================
The evolving "Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women," from the U.N.'s Division for the Advancement of Women, is at
http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/cedaw/index.html
At the site, too, is a list of signatories to the convention and to its most recent protocol, which includes enforcement provisions. The latest protocol went into effect on December 22, 2000.
The Web site of the United Nations' Development Fund for Women contains a report on the progress of women worldwide
http://www.unifem.undp.org/
The Web site of Human Rights Watch has a section on women's human rights, which describes specific problems women face and elaborates on state-sponsored and state-tolerated discrimination against them. See
http://www.hrw.org/women
To see how the AFL-CIO labor organization communicates information on sex discrimination, go to
http://www.hrw.org/women
CCH published Baker and McKenzie's "Worldwide Guide to Termination, Employment Discrimination, and Workplace Harassment Laws" in 2000. It is available from the company at 1-800-248-3248.
Global economic changes and the burgeoning number of multinational corporations have helped drive this trend, according to the international employment law firm Baker and McKenzie. Many of these businesses demand a ready supply of workers – often drawn across national boundaries - and try to adhere to certain global standards of conduct in the face of diverse national labor laws and social standards. In many countries, too, governments are coming to believe that women's participation in the workforce is crucial to economic growth and stability. Another factor is that labor unions and women's and human rights groups are bringing grassroots pressure to bear by informing women of their legal rights.
Those legal rights have been growing and evolving worldwide over the past 20 years, says legal expert Jane Aeberhard-Hodges of the Equality and Human Rights Coordination Branch of the International Labour Organization (ILO) in Geneva, Switzerland. There are now labor codes and laws on human rights and equality covering all aspects of gender-based discrimination – some created nationally, some required for membership in regional economic alliances like the European Union and the North Atlantic Free Trade Agreement, and some stemming from national adoption of international conventions. These days, most national sex discrimination laws demand equal pay for equal work, and many prohibit negative employment action against female employees who marry or become pregnant, though enforcement mechanisms in some nations are not particularly strong.
Organizations such as the ILO and the United Nations' Division on the Advancement of Women play an important role. Protocols and conventions passed and signed by the member states of these organizations set international standards of behavior that, even when not adhered to, are difficult to totally ignore. A new protocol to the United Nations' Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women took effect in December 2000. Signatories allow a U.N. committee to review women's claims of grave or systematic rights violations. Sixty-eight countries have signed it so far, and among the 28 that have ratified, or officially adopted, the protocol are Bangladesh, Azerbaijan, Bolivia, Costa Rica, Croatia, Kazakhstan, Mali, Namibia, Peru, Thailand and Uruguay.
In addition, several countries have recently passed specific laws that address sexual harassment as wrong and unacceptable in places of employment, according to Aeberhard-Hodges, though few international instruments take on harassment directly. Malaysia, South Korea and Japan are among those that now have such codes. Brazil and some other South American countries have ratified the Inter-American Convention to Prevent, Punish and Extinguish Violence Against Women, which requires adopting countries to put measures into place to extinguish sexual harassment in the workplace.
Baker and McKenzie's "Worldwide Guide to Termination, Employment Discrimination, and Workplace Harassment Laws" lists the specifics of national legislation in 31 countries that have laws banning sex discrimination and sexual harassment. Enforcement ranges from lenient fines to criminal penalties. In some places, corporations face liability; in others, individuals may be held personally liable.
Employers should remember that even in countries that ban sex bias, women continue to confront many forces that influence whether they actually receive equal treatment in the workplace. For example, traditional cultural mores and/or highly conservative religious views sometimes reinforce male domination and restrict women's chances for paid work and economic independence, observers from Human Rights Watch who monitor sex discrimination point out. This frequently occurs even in countries that pay lip service to equality and have laws supporting it. In other places, such as France, sexual interchanges considered culturally acceptable by many workers are now restricted under relatively new laws required by the European Union. According to an article in the New York Times, such imposition of new workplace standards is causing resentment and backlash in some countries where the regulations conflict with formerly accepted behavior. Coping with such backlashes may present people managers with particularly difficult challenges in coming years.
====================================================
The evolving "Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women," from the U.N.'s Division for the Advancement of Women, is at
http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/cedaw/index.html
At the site, too, is a list of signatories to the convention and to its most recent protocol, which includes enforcement provisions. The latest protocol went into effect on December 22, 2000.
The Web site of the United Nations' Development Fund for Women contains a report on the progress of women worldwide
http://www.unifem.undp.org/
The Web site of Human Rights Watch has a section on women's human rights, which describes specific problems women face and elaborates on state-sponsored and state-tolerated discrimination against them. See
http://www.hrw.org/women
To see how the AFL-CIO labor organization communicates information on sex discrimination, go to
http://www.hrw.org/women
CCH published Baker and McKenzie's "Worldwide Guide to Termination, Employment Discrimination, and Workplace Harassment Laws" in 2000. It is available from the company at 1-800-248-3248.