All over the world men work longer hours than women except in the Philippines, an International Labor Organization (ILO) report called “Working Time Around the World†said.“Average hours of work are longer for men than for women in almost every country reviewed in the report. The sole exception is the Philippines,†it said.
The role reversal in the Philippines showed that employed women were two to three times more likely than men to work exceptionally long hours of over 64 hours per week.
Citing 2002 figures, the ILO report said that working Filipino women worked 41.3 hours a week, slightly longer than the 40.4 hours a week put in by Filipino men.
The report said this phenomenon is driven largely by the growth of the service sector, which employ more women than men. In particular, the service sub-sector of the wholesale and retail trade posts a weekly work time of 48.8 hours; that of the hotel and restaurant, 48.6 hours.
The international agency said more than half of the country’s workers who log more than 40 hours a week are in the service sector, which has grown substantially in the last decade.
“All of this raises an important question: Given the long hours of paid work of many Filipino women, how are they able to balance work and family?†it asked.
The same study, which focuses on working time in over 50 countries and explores the implications for working time policies in developing and transition countries, said that one in five workers around the world -- or over 600 million persons -- still work excessively, or more than 48 hours a week, just to make ends meet.
“For the most part, it shows that the distribution of working hours in developing and transition countries to be highly diverse, with some individuals working very long hours, and others working short hours,†it said.
The report said that all over the world, people in general work 35 to 45 hours a week. However, people in a significant number of developing countries work more than 48 hours. These include workers in Costa Rica, El Salvador, Peru, the Philippines, Thailand, and Turkey.
Among the developed countries, the exceptions are the southeast Asian countries of Singapore and Korea.
In the Philippines, more than 90 percent of workers put in more than 48 hours a week to earn more.
For countries with the highest incidence of long working hours for 2004 to 2005 (defined as more than 48 hours per week), Peru topped the list at 50.9 percent of workers, the Republic of Korea at 49.5 percent, Thailand at 46.7 percent, and Pakistan at
44.4 percent.
In developed countries, where working hours are typically shorter, the United Kingdom stood at 25.7 per cent, Israel at 25.5 percent, Australia at 20.4 percent, Switzerland at 19.2 percent, and the United States at 18.1 percent.
(By Veronica Uy, the Philippine Daily Inquirer)Linkback:
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