Gender and Work
At every level of the global hierarchy, wealth inequalities intersect with inequalities based on race, ethnicity, and gender. Those who are rich can accumulate even more wealth over their lifetimes or over generations. Those who depend primarily on income earned from work struggle to stay afloat and are constantly vulnerable to losing their jobs.
According to Oxfam, “At the top of the global economy a small elite are unimaginably rich. Their wealth grows exponentially over time, with little effort, and regardless of whether they add value to society. Meanwhile, at the bottom of the economy, women and girls, especially women and girls living in poverty and from marginalized groups, are putting in 12.5 billion hours every day of care work for free, and countless more for poverty wages. Their work is essential to our communities. It underpins thriving families and a healthy and productive workforce.”
Oxfam calculates the monetary value of women’s unpaid care work globally as at least $10.8 trillion annually – three times the size of the world’s tech industry. Those laboring at low-paid jobs in health, education, and other essential sectors are also disproportionately women. Changing that reality requires public investment to provide public goods such as health, elder care, and child care, and ensuring that decent jobs with adequate pay are available to all. And checking the further growth of inequality, as technological change reshapes the global job market, requires government action to protect workers’ rights and provide economic opportunities. It also requires adequately financed universal social protection systems to protect both those who work and those unable to work for reasons of age, disability, or other limitations.
Technological innovation – automation, the internet, smartphones, and more – continues to accelerate. The impact on the workforce, in terms of who reaps the benefits and who is further disadvantaged, is highly unequal. The gig economy, subcontracting, and remote access to work over online platforms open up doors for some. Meanwhile, formal work protected by strong unions and government regulation is everywhere in decline. That is why those who study the “future of work” stress the urgency of collective action. The Global Commission on the Future of Work, for example, lays out ten principles that should be adopted, including a universal guarantee of basic workers’ rights and social protection from birth to old age. Fulfilling these principles, however, requires both political will and financial resources.

Domestic workers in South Africa, as in most countries, are underpaid and often not protected by legislation covering the formal sector. Unions have campaigned to expand such protections, with some success. Credit: Labour Research Service.
Where’s the Money?
Almost 10 percent of the world’s wealth is held offshore, where it is shielded from the tax authorities of rich and poor countries alike. “Offshore,” however, is not a physical location but rather a fiction of legal paperwork. Ultra-rich individuals, aided by bankers, lawyers, and other financial agents, hide their money in a web of shell companies, while multinational corporations mask profits through accounting sleight-of-hand. Countries desperately need revenue to support economic and social development, but the information necessary to locate and tax the money is rarely accessible. The facts of who actually owns the wealth and where it is earned remain hidden, becoming visible only when revealed in court or outed by whistleblowers or investigative journalists.
This is one of the key reasons why it is difficult for campaigns against global inequality to gain traction. Action must come from national governments, requiring political pressure focused on a single country. But the targets are elusive and their money easily takes flight across borders.
The latest and most sensational case is #LuandaLeaks, from the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) responsible for the #PanamaPapers and other previous exposés.
Africa’s richest woman, Isabel dos Santos, daughter of the man who served as president of Angola for 38 years, used her family connections to siphon off wealth into a network of more than 400 companies in 41 countries. The story is told in detail on the ICIJ website and in other press reports. The ICIJ documents how this fortune was built with the collaboration of leading Western firms, who helped dos Santos move money, set up companies, and avoid taxes. They include two of the four major global accounting firms, PwC and KPMG, as well as the Boston Consulting Group, one of the three top global management consulting firms. Although dos Santos faces confiscation of some of her properties following the scandal, there is no sign that her global enablers will suffer any serious penalty.