经济学人下载:女人们都做什么工作呢

What explains all this? The World Bank suggests three reasons. First, discrimination. Some men think women are less capable, and some laws treat the sexes differently. Women also have fewer assets that can be turned into capital. Land is a prime example. In 16 poor countries, 55% of female-headed households own land, but 64% of male-headed ones do. Female plots are usually smaller, too. This makes it harder for women to start businesses. In China, South Africa and Senegal, the bank found, food-processing firms prefer to sign export contracts with men, since they fear women will find it harder to meet the terms of the contract. So women do not grow cash crops. This problem is not confined to poor countries: the European Union found women less likely to start a business than men, largely for lack of credit.

怎样解释这个现象呢？世界银行提出了三个原因。第一，歧视。一些男性认为女性不如他们有能力，而且有些法律区别对待不同的性别。女人们还占有相对较少的可转化为资本的资产。土地就是一个主要的例子。在16个贫困的国家中，55%的女性主导的家庭拥有土地，而64%的男性主导的家庭拥有土地。女性拥有的土地也通常要小一些。这让女人们更难开始从事商业活动。世界银行发现，在中国、南非和塞内加尔，食品加工公司更喜欢和男人签下出口合同，因为他们担心女人们更加难以履行合同中的条款。所以女人们都不种经济作物。这个问题也不局限在贫穷的国家：欧盟发现女性相比起男性更少从事商业活动，主要原因就是缺乏信贷支持。

Next, women are sometimes less qualified than men. Though advances in female education are widespread, they are not universal. Among older workers, men tend to have spent longer studying. Also, in the few countries with statistics on the matter, male workers tend to have been employed for longer than women, giving them more work experience.

其次，女性时常不如男性胜任工作。虽然对女性的教育有了广泛的进步，但却不够普遍。在年纪较大的工人中，男性通常有着更长的学习时间。而且，在少数几个有这方面统计数据的国家中，男性工人通常被雇佣更长的时间，这给了男性更多的工作经验。

But the main reason that women cluster in low-paid fields, the bank argues, is that they do not control their own time. In rich Austria and Italy, women do at least three times as much housework and child care as men. In poorer Cambodia, they do 50% more. Income has little to do with this. Pakistani men allocate the same amount of time to paid work, housework and child care as Swedish men. Everywhere, this constrains women’s job choices.

但是世界银行认为，女性集中在低收入行业的主要原因是她们不能控制自己的时间。在富裕的奥地利和意大利，花在家务和孩子看管方面的时间女性至少要比男性多3倍。在贫穷一些的柬埔寨，女人们则要多做50%。收入和这个关系不大。在把时间分配到有酬劳的工作，家务和孩子的看管上，巴基斯坦的男人与瑞典的男人一样。不管在哪里，这个因素都限制了女性工作的选择。

Women are more likely than men to take part-time or informal work. This is sometimes a voluntary choice. But sometimes they are pushed by employers’ attitudes or sexist laws, such as those requiring a woman to get her husband’s permission to work. “Progress has been tremendous where lifting a single barrier is sufficient [for example, in education],” concludes the bank. But where multiple barriers exist, progress has been glacial. Manhattanites do not see this, however. The motion at NYU was carried.

女性还比男性更多的找兼职或者非正式的工作。有时这是她们自愿的，而有时则是迫于雇佣者的态度或者是对性别差别对待的法律，比如有些地方的法律要求女性获得丈夫的许可才能工作。世界银行总结道：“当只需取消一项障碍就足够解决问题的时候，进步是巨大的（比如在教育上）。”而如果阻碍是多方面的话，进展就非常缓慢。曼哈顿人没看到这点，于是纽约大学最后采纳了那个观点。