Women earn on average 77 per cent of what men earn, the United Nations labour organization said today, noting that \u201cwithout targeted action, pay equity between women and men will not be achieved before 2086, or at least 71 years from now.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAre working women better off today than they were 20 years ago?\u201d asked Director-General of the International Labour Organization (ILO<\/a>) Guy Ryder in a press release<\/a> ahead of Sunday\u2019s International Women\u2019s Day<\/a>, marked annually on 8 March.<\/p>\n \u201cThe answer is a qualified yes. Has this progress met our expectations? The answer is a decidedly no. We need to be innovative, to reframe the debate and to intensify the focus on ensuring the rights of women at work,\u201d he declared.<\/p>\n While access to maternity protection has improved \u2013 the percentage of countries offering 14 weeks or more maternity level has increased from 38 per cent to 51 per cent \u2013 more than 800 million women workers globally still do not have adequate maternity protection. That\u2019s 41 per cent of the female workforce worldwide.<\/p>\n Progress in implementing the Declaration and Platform for Action adopted at the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995 has been mixed, the ILO said in a briefing note<\/a>, on the heels of also releasing a new report that found that the \u201cmotherhood pay gap\u201d that \u201cimposes a wage penalty often over and above the age gap already experienced by women worldwide.\u201d<\/p>\n