Social security is an important tool to prevent and reduce poverty

Frances Zainoeddin, a representative of the International Federation on Ageing, noting that she is “one of the oldest of the old”, said she counted herself lucky, having a home, food and pension, with access to health services.  However, older persons around the world continue to face persistent barriers preventing their autonomy, identity and independence, she said, urging swift and bold actions by Governments to ensure that ageing policies are human-rights-based.

Eynote speaker Manuela Tomei Assistant Director-General, Governance, Rights and Dialogue Cluster stressing that to reduce inequality, it is necessary to create jobs for all those who need and wish to work.  Further, equal access to quality education and training and quality public services from early childhood must be ensured.

ALYA AHMED SAIF AL-THANI (Qatar), Chair of the Commission for Social Development highlighted, treating productive employment and decent work for all is a proven pathway to reduce inequality in a sustained manner,” she underscored, adding it promotes social inclusion and political participation and is part of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.  Thus, the Commission’s deliberations should also point to wage- and social‑protection policies that can create full and productive employment and decent work.  For progress to take hold, it is important to have integrated employment policy responses as the Secretary-General’s Global Jobs and Social Protection Accelerator for Just Transitions.  Similarly, social protection is central for shared prosperity, social equity and justice, and addressing the systemic exclusion of the most disadvantaged and vulnerable groups; it is an investment and not a mere expenditure.

To ensure a fair and inclusive transition to a green economy, Governments must support those regions, industries and workers that will face the greatest challenges in the transition, she continued.  Tailored job-search assistance, flexible learning courses, employment programmes and hiring and transition incentives are policies needed to facilitate the reallocation of displaced workers.  To this end, she stressed the need to create opportunities for young people to accumulate knowledge and skills relevant for the labour market through education, training and early work experience.

She also called for universal, gender-responsive and sustainable national social protection systems.  Commending the Commission’s collaboration with other functional commissions and with partners throughout the United Nations system, she stressed the importance of improving collaboration among the Economic and Social Council functional commissions and expert bodies.

Less developed countries are still facing high unemployment rates and women are facing job losses.  About 60 per cent of the workforce, or 2 billion people, are employed in the informal economy and many vulnerable groups, including the disabled, older people and women, are bearing the brunt of unemployment. So,  States must commit to existing policies supporting decent and quality jobs for all and create new policies that are inclusive, equitable and adaptable to the labour market. Moreover, investment in education, technology, infrastructure and health services that are accessible to all will also help to reduce inequality and poverty and enhance human capital development for the rapid achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals. Adding that all must recognize that social security is an important tool to prevent and reduce poverty.

In Africa, informal employment and unemployment among young people and women has continued to increase.  Informal employment creates challenges for these people in accessing credit, markets and services, which then hampers productivity and growth of economies and businesses.Social-protection systems, including nationally defined social-protection floors, are an effective instrument not only for eradicating poverty, but also for reducing inequality and building resilience.  Adaptive social-protection systems can also address compounded vulnerabilities and reduce disaster risk, and thus build resilience within communities, creating full and productive employment and decent work for all is a proven pathway to reducing inequality in a sustained manner. 

Hence, well-funded universal social-protection systems, as well as care systems, are critical to guarantee that older persons have access to at least an adequate minimum income and key services, such as health care and long-term care, she continued.  Noting that barriers to women’s access to labour markets persist through their lives, she called for a gender- and human rights-based perspective on ageing in policies and programmes related to decent work and employment. The need to create productive employment and decent work for all as a way of overcoming inequalities to accelerate the recovery.

Addressing Inequality through Equitable Labor Markets

The 2022 edition of the Global Gender Gap Report called attention to a post-pandemic crisis in the workforce: gender parity across key indicators was slipping, implying large-scale disruption of economic opportunities for women worldwide in labour-market participation, in skilling, in wealth accumulation and in overall wellbeing.33 The recovery from the shock and ensuing polycrisis has been slow and, so far, incomplete, and the current context, coupled with technological and climate change, risks causing further regression in women’s economic empowerment. Not only are millions of women and girls losing out on economic access and opportunity, but these reversals also have wide-ranging consequences for the global economy.

Following a series of gradual but steady increases in the share of women in leadership roles over the past two decades, this share has edged up to, on average, 33.7% in 2023 from 33.4% in 2022 across public- and private-sector leadership roles. However, high-frequency data presented in the report shows that hiring rates for women into leadership positions across industries have been in decline since mid-2022.

Increasing women’s economic participation and achieving gender parity in leadership, in both business and government, are two key levers for addressing broader gender gaps in households, societies and economies. In addition, there are multiple mechanisms that link gender parity with firm-level and economic performance: a robust gender strategy is increasingly seen as essential to attracting the best talent and ensuring long-run economic performance, resilience and survival. Evidence on diversity in decision making shows that a diverse group of leaders makes more fact-based decisions that result in higher quality outcomes. And at an economy-wide level, gender parity is increasingly being recognized as critical for financial stability and economic performance.34

Collective, coordinated and bold action by private- and public sector leaders will be instrumental in accelerating progress towards gender parity and igniting renewed growth and greater resilience. Beyond leadership representation, companies can engage in strategies to transform organizational culture, and design products and services to serve a broader range of consumers by making innovation processes more inclusive. Impactful initiatives are emerging at the frontier of business strategy and government policy, yet adoption beyond the frontier too often remains on the surface, is incomplete or altogether deprioritized. Government policy can be better designed to increase women’s labour-force participation, wages, and financial and technology access, and improve care systems and representation in public-sector leadership.

Some governments are taking an equity and inclusion lens to economic policy-making, with recent gender mainstreaming efforts explicitly recognizing gender parity as critical to economic growth and financial stability. A number of governments are implementing more gender equal approaches to increasing labour force participation, pay equity and health and safety standards, preventing harassment and sexual violence at work. At the federal government level, progress can be enabled through gender-responsive budgeting which has in recent years been pioneered and expanded by a growing number of countries, including Sweden, India and Kenya. Further, governments are increasingly recognizing the importance of investing in the care economy and taking steps to support it. They are implementing policies such as expanding access to affordable childcare, improving parental leave policies, and investing in healthcare and eldercare services to promote the wellbeing of individuals and the overall economy. Ongoing efforts are a step in the right direction yet will need significant scaling to overcome existing gender gaps in economic participation.