Men hold more jobs at the expense of women, youth

More women and youth lack jobs as unemployment remains unevenly distributed among males and females and youth and adults.

The findings are contained in a new report co-authored by the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS) and focused on levels of inequality in the country.

The report off a survey covering the years between 1994 and 2016 shows that female unemployment rates have nearly been more than double that of males across the two decades.

Youth unemployment rates have also stood at nearly double the average rates.

“Among the employed population, a larger proportion of females relative to males and youth are in the informal sector of unemployment. Females were more likely to be working in family agriculture and as unpaid workers or to be in self-employment relative to males,” noted the report.

“Furthermore, women are less likely to be in certain occupations, especially manual occupations in transportation and manufacturing sectors.”

Similarly, labour force participation has remained steadily in the favour of men in spite of the female gender edging out males in the population count.

Moreover, women continue to earn less than men with real monthly earnings for women rounding off to an index score of 3.52 in 2014 compared to 4.12 per cent for men.

In 1993, men real earnings had an index score of 3.53 (higher than the women’s score today), while the women’s score stood at 2.62.

The skewed jobs’ distribution among men and women is largely attributable to inequality in education access.

While there are no major differences by gender in primary and secondary education, women have a lower score in their access to tertiary education.

The share of male and female learners in university has moved from a par of 50 per cent in 1994 to a ratio of 61:39 in 2016.

“Access to university education increasingly favours men above women, an indication of increasing inequality in access to university education by gender due to the performance in KCSE, where male learners usually perform better than female learners on average,” added the report.