ISLAMABAD, (MILLAT/APP): Women and girls contributing a major
poriton of digital revolution as currently 25 percent of the
industries’ workforce are women.
“Currently only 18 percent of undergraduate computer science
degrees are held by women. We must see a significant shift in girls
all over the world taking STEM subjects, if women are to compete
successfully for high-paying `new collar’ jobs”.
United Nations (UN) Women Executive Director Phumzile
Mlambo-Ngcuka in her message on International Women Day said
across the world, too many women and girls spend too many hours on
household responsibilities-typically more than double the time spent
by men and boys which contribute in changing world of work.
They look after younger siblings, older family members, deal
with illness in the family and manage the house and in many cases
this unequal division of labour is at the expense of women’s and
girls’ learning, of paid work, sports, or engagement in civic or
community leadership, said a news release issued here on Friday..
This shapes the norms of relative disadvantage and advantage,
of where women and men are positioned in the economy, of what they
are skilled to do and where they will work.
This is the unchanging world of unrewarded work, a globally
familiar scene of withered futures, where girls and their mothers
sustain the family with free labour, with lives whose trajectories
are very different from the men of the household.
“We want to construct a different world of work for women. As
they grow up, girls must be exposed to a broad range of careers, and
encouraged to make choices that lead beyond the traditional service
and care options to jobs in industry, art, public service, modern
agriculture and science”, she said.
“We have to start change at home and in the earliest days of
school, so that there are no places in a child’s environment where
they learn that girls must be less, have less, and dream smaller
than boys”, she added.
This will take adjustments in parenting, curricula,
educational settings and channels for everyday stereotypes like
Television (TV), advertising and entertainment, it will take
determined steps to protect young girls from harmful cultural
practices like early marriage, and from all forms of violence.
She added that achieving equality in the workplace will
require an expansion of decent work and employment opportunities,
involving governments’ targeted efforts to promote women’s
participation in economic life, the support of important collectives
like trade unions, and the voices of women themselves in framing
solutions to overcome current barriers to women’s participation, as
examined by the UN Secretary-General’s High-level Panel on Women’s
Economic Empowerment.
The stakes are high: advancing women’s equality could boost
global Gross Development Programme by US$ 12 trillion by 2025.