Gestor bibliográfico Crisis y Salud

This paper examines issues of women's employment and decent work in the context of the ongoing global financial and economic crisis. Recognizing the significant role of informal work, it considers how informal work affects the self-employed, those employed by micro-enterprises, unpaid workers in family businesses and those who provide unpaid care activities. It focuses on the implications of the current crisis for women workers and how labour markets have responded, and it analyses crisis-response strategies that endeavour to ensure the stability and/or expansion of women's employment and to improve its conditions. This examination leads to policy recommendations relevant to different contexts. This introductory chapter addresses two issues as background. The first relates to why we should expect-or even look for-gender-differentiated employment effects of financial and economic crises. The second relates to the macroeconomic processes that are endemic to a typical crisis' progression and how these processes affect labour market conditions. Chapter 2 examines changing employment patterns and labour market conditions before and after the mid-2008 breakout of the crisis, particularly with a view towards examining the differential impacts on men's and women's employment. In the ongoing crisis, employment patterns have not always followed the gender differentiated patterns that are widely predicted in the literature. The reasons for this may change as the nature of the crisis shifts from financial to fiscal spheres.