Monitoring International Labor Standards Techniques and Sources of Information (2004) / Chapter Skim
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7 Discrimination
7 Discrimination
Pages 197-223
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From page 197... ...
This chapter begins by reviewing the issues involved in defining discrimination in employment and the approaches that the various international conventions in this area have taken. The second section then discusses the pluses and minuses of the committee's proposed indicators to assess compliance with international nondiscrimination norms.
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From page 198... ...
DEFINITIONS From its founding in 1919, the ILO recognized the importance of protection for vulnerable groups, such as women, children, and migrants, and the need to address discrimination. The Philadelphia Declaration of 1944, in which the ILO reaffirmed the importance of its mission and principles in an age of rebuilding and decolonization after World War II, included a commitment to equal opportunity in work and education and vocational training for all people, "irrespective of race, creed, or sex." One of the first acts by the new United Nations in 1948 was approval of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, which states that, "Everyone is entitled to all of the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, color, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status."1 In addition to basic civil and political rights, the Universal Declaration on Human Rights also includes a prohibition of forced labor and promotes freedom of association, the right to organize, and other labor rights.
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From page 199... ...
The report emphasizes that the ILO definition includes direct as well as indirect sources of discrimination and that intent to discriminate is not necessary to find that a problem exists (International Labour Organization, 2003)
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From page 200... ...
The ILO over the years has also clarified that national extraction is generally understood to refer to legal citizens of a country who have family roots in another country or who may be naturalized citizens, but that it does not necessarily refer to those of a different nationality. There are protections for migrant workers but nationality can be used as a legitimate criterion in some jobs, such as publicsector jobs.
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From page 201... ...
The 1965 U.N. Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination includes a provision guaranteeing equal rights to work, "just and favorable conditions of work," and "equal pay for equal work," though the latter is narrower than the ILO standard for equal remuneration for "work of equal value." The Universal Declaration on Human Rights adds language and property, birth, or status to the list, but these could be encompassed in one or another of the grounds specified in Convention No.
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From page 202... ...
6Thomas (2002) also discusses other international legal instruments that address discrimination in employment, including ILO conventions on other issues that include nondiscrimination provisions, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and regional instruments in Europe, the Americas, and Africa.
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From page 203... ...
If sufficient consensus emerges, additional grounds that might be added to ILO jurisdiction in the future include discrimination based on age, sexual orientation, disability, and other health conditions, most notably HIV/AIDS. The recent global report on discrimination, under the Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work, discusses possible discrimination problems associated with age, disability, and HIV/AIDS (International Labour Organization, 2003)
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From page 204... ...
Affirmative action programs may be appropriate in cases of long-standing or entrenched discrimination. Effective grievance procedures are also crucial because nondiscrimination is often subtle and difficult for outside observers to identify.
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From page 205... ...
Lower labor force participation rates for women, for example, could reflect voluntary decisions by families to have mothers withdraw from the (paid) labor force while children are young; the same might be the case if more women than men are in part-time work because of family choices.
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From page 206... ...
Development Programmes' "gender development index," added to the Human Development Report in 1995, may also be useful to flag cases of particular concern and, as the series grows longer, to assess trends. The index includes several indicators of inequality: differences in life expectancy (adjusted for the fact that women, on average, have a longer life expectancy than men)
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From page 207... ...
, religion, political opinion, national extraction, and social origin; A-6. whether there are laws that cover additional grounds on which employment discrimination is prohibited, for example disability or sexual orientation; A-7.
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From page 208... ...
Government Performance The ILO supervisory process can be an important source of information about countries' laws, policies, and practices with regard to labor standards. These data should not be used as quantitative indicators (e.g., numbers of complaints or comments)
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From page 209... ...
In looking at educational opportunities, differences in educational attainment that are due to discrimination in turn affect employment opportunities available to different groups. The data on this indicator will be more difficult to get and available largely from national sources but would be a more precise indicator of potential discrimination in labor markets than general educational attainment outcomes.
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From page 210... ...
At the same time, however, women may be undercounted in the informal sector because the international definition excludes household production activities exclusively for the household's use, paid domestic service in private households, and homework carried out for an employer in the formal sector (International Labour Organization, 1999)
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From page 211... ...
Associated Factors There are four other indicators that can be helpful in assessing a countrys' compliance to eliminate discrimination. One is a country's ranking on the U.N.'s human development index minus its ranking on the gender development index: large differences between the rankings on this index and the human development index could indicate a particular problem with gender discrimination issues.
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From page 212... ...
However, high female labor force participation rates, for example in sub-Saharan Africa, where many women work in agriculture, are not necessarily an indicator that discrimination does not exist. Low levels of female labor force participation may also be due to undercounting.
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Department of State reports; and unofficial sources. The International Labour Organization As detailed in Chapter 2, the ILO has a variety of reports and databases that provide information on the application of labor standards, including discrimination in employment, and on labor market outcomes.
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From page 214... ...
and informal interpretations of conventions by the ILO, which are issued when a member requests advice on whether a particular law is in conformity with the relevant convention.10 On nondiscrimination the CEACR conducted general surveys of the application of the core conventions in 1996 (equality in employment) and 1986 (equal remuneration)
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From page 215... ...
More potentially useful are the global reports prepared by the International Labour Office and submitted to the conference by the director-general. The first such report on nondiscrimination was released in 2003 and includes a great deal of information on sources and manifestations of discrimination in employment, as well as examples both of continuing problems in some countries and of progress in others (International Labour Organization, 2003)
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From page 216... ...
The CEDAW reports are supposed to include a section on equality in employment that includes a description of labor laws, basic labor market statistics, and levels of education among women in the workforce. Even a brief look of some of the country reports reveals the varied quality of the reports, however.
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From page 217... ...
The country information page includes a summary chart showing which countries have submitted information on their national machinery for achieving equality, their national action plans, and replies to the questionnaire; it also shows when the most recent CEDAW report was examined by the committee and which countries have signed and ratified the optional protocol allowing the committee to receive individual complaints.14 Finally, data on the status of women and an analysis of overall trends since Beijing are available in The World's Women 2000: Trends and Statistics (United Nations, 2000) , which also discusses gaps and weaknesses in the available data.
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From page 218... ...
Department of States' annual country reports on human rights include discrimination, but in a separate section that is not focused on labor rights. Moreover, as noted in Chapter 2, the country reports are variable in quality and sometimes toned down for political reasons.
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From page 219... ...
The data, collected by national authorities, are often based on differing definitions and are therefore not always comparable across countries. If the goal is to assess each country's compliance primarily against its own past and to determine whether progress is being made, then cross-country comparability is not a major problem, though there will still be problems with gaps in time series and with changes in definitions over time in the same country (see discussion on labor market data quality and comparability in Rama and Artecona, 2002)
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From page 220... ...
, which review compliance with each of the four core standards. These reports have been prepared for 70-plus countries or regions since 1997 in parallel to the WTO's trade policy review mechanism because the ICFTU believes that mechanism should address labor standards issues.18 A number of gender-specific websites provide quite useful, if noncomprehensive information.
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From page 221... ...
The second useful NGO website for information on gender issues, especially of a legal nature, is Womens' Human Rights Resources, based at the Bora Laskin Law Library of the University of Toronto.21 This site provides a research guide on international womens' human rights law and describes important sources at both the international and national levels, with links to some of them. The website also has a "womens' human rights resources database" that includes summaries of and, in some cases, links to article citations, NGO reports, and official documents, including international conventions, national legislation, and case law.
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From page 222... ...
The ILO director-general's global report on discrimination (International Labour Organization, 2003) notes that while efforts have been made to improve the gender sensitivity of labor market statistics, little theoretical or methodological work has been done for other kinds of discrimination.
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From page 223... ...
Depart ment of Labor support, assist national statistical agencies in gath ering labor market information on ethnic, religious, migrant worker, or other groups that may be vulnerable to discrimination and post that information, along with other labor market infor mation, on a public website. REFERENCES International Labour Organization.
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