Women's empowerment, key to an inclusive future

"We define happiness as a state where essential needs are met and where men and women, in full freedom, can choose and have the opportunity to use their innate and acquired abilities to the fullest for their own benefit and for the benefit of society.

El país de las mujeres, Gioconda Belli.

The quote at the top of this post is not very far from the definition of inclusive and sustainable wellbeing that emerged from a reflection process carried out between Orkestra and several universities of the AUSJAL network. The definition, which is included in one of Orkestra's reports, is somewhat more complex and reads as follows: "Inclusive and sustainable wellbeing is the result of a systemic and dynamic process whereby all the people who make up a society have their human needs fully covered and can fully develop their potential as individuals, collaboratively building the future they want for their territory among all the actors in their community, in a way that is sustainable over time and in solidarity with the rest of the inhabitants of the planet".   

Whether we call it happiness or inclusive and sustainable wellbeing, in both cases it is stressed that, in order to achieve this state, essential human needs must be covered and people must be able to fully develop their capabilities. This is something we wanted to examine in the 2024 Basque Country Competitiveness Report, entitled "Inclusion: motor of competitiveness and wellbeing", where we analysed the differences that existed by gender, age and place of birth in two areas of inclusion. On the one hand, access to wellbeing outcomes, that is, having needs covered, and on the other, participation, through the development and use of capabilities to actively contribute to the construction of these outcomes. In this post we present some of the conclusions we obtained regarding the differences between men and women.

Women have more difficulty in accessing wellbeing because they head more poverty-stricken households and have more precarious employment than men. 

Although poverty and social exclusion levels in the Basque Country are lower than in other territories, there is a significant difference when the sex of the reference person in the household is considered; in 2022, 2.9% of households whose reference person was a man were affected by poverty, but this percentage rose to 5.5% if the reference person was a woman. This situation is related to differences in job insecurity, which decreases with age, but is higher for women than for men in all age groups. Thus, in 2023, 86.2% of women and 69.9% of men aged 15-24 reported job insecurity, compared to 27.3% of women and 22.5% of men aged 45-64. 

This also has implications for the gender pay gap, which even exists at the youngest age and progressively widens with age, reaching its peak at the age of 39; it stabilises in the 40s and then increases again, first substantially among people in the 50-54 age group and, more gradually thereafter. Gender gaps are particularly high in low-skilled occupations, possibly because in the case of men it includes industrial labourers, and in the case of women, there is a high percentage of domestic workers with much lower salary conditions.

Women participate to a lesser extent than men in the labour market and their working conditions are usually worse.

And the thing is, the differences between men and women in terms of access to the material conditions of wellbeing are largely explained by their different participation in the labour market. On the one hand, the female activity rate is lower than the male rate because their traditional roles as caregivers keep them out of the labour market and, on the other hand, when they do get a job, their working conditions tend to be worse. This is partly because they work to a greater extent in sectors with more precarious working conditions, and partly because they have occupations with lower levels of qualifications, making it particularly difficult for them to reach management positions. According to a report by the Association of Businesswomen and Women Managers of Bizkaia, women only hold 22% of all positions on the Boards of Directors of Basque companies. 

In addition, as already highlighted in a post on women's working conditions and their role in the foundational economy, women have more temporary (or discontinued fixed term) contracts and work fewer hours, either because of unwanted part-time work (they would like to work more hours but cannot find jobs that allow them to do so) or because they reduce their working day to a much greater extent than men to dedicate themselves to caregiving tasks, which will have implications for both their present and future incomes.

Educational differences partly explain differences in work, but it is traditional caregiving roles that condition both labour differences and wellbeing inequalities.

The differences in the type of jobs women and men have access to are partly linked to the type of education they have, but not directly to the level of training. The percentage of women with a university education is higher than that of men and, moreover, they also participate to a greater extent than men in lifelong learning activities. However, there are still differences in terms of training areas. In the 2022/2023 academic year, only 34% of students in university STEM degrees were women, and the percentage was even lower (11%) for STEM degree programs in vocational training. In addition, jobs positions do not always match the educational level of individuals, and overqualification seems to affect women more than men, as 16.4% of employed women interviewed in the Work-Life Balance Survey reported being overqualified for their job, compared to 11.8% of men.

It is also the differences in the distribution of caregiving tasks that largely explain the unequal participation in social construction and in access to wellbeing, not only material but more generally in terms of life satisfaction and happiness, as mentioned earlier. This is something we already emphasised in a previous post, highlighting that even in societies considered advanced, such as Sweden's, domestic and caregiving tasks are still the responsibility of women. 

This reality is still valid in our territory, since in 2023 employed women spent 4.7 hours a day on childcare caregiving tasks while men dedicated 3.6 hours. A difference is also observed in the degree of satisfaction with the tasks performed by spouses: men (with a rating of 7.6 out of 10) are more satisfied than women (6.2). Possibly as a consequence of this disparity in dedication to caregiving and household tasks, women's satisfaction with the time they devote to their personal life (5.6) is lower than that of men (6.1).

It is necessary to recognise the intrinsic value of women to create a more inclusive wellbeing that benefits both their personal wellbeing and that of the Basque society as a whole. 

 We emphasize that to create more inclusive wellbeing,  the empowerment of women is important so that, first,  they can choose the skills they want to acquire, which translates into professional development that generates value in society, second, the responsibility for domestic and caregiving work is shared equitably, allowing women to participate in the formal labour market and dedicate their time to generating income, and third, their satisfaction with the time they dedicate to themselves improves.  

To achieve this, it is important to recognise the intrinsic value of women and acknowledge that, by improving their participation, not only their wellbeing will increase but also that of men. Additionally, quantifying the cost of female discrimination for Basque society is crucial. Perhaps this will bring us closer to the happiness Gioconda Belli describes.