Trade Union Training on Youth Employment for Leaders of Youth Committees in Asia and the Pacific region Bangkok May 13, 2004 Sara Spant Associate Expert on Employment Promotion ILO Subregional Office for East Asia

Policies and Strategies for Youth Employment Equal Opportunities

Ensuring equal opportunities How do we ensure equal opportunities?

General Actions for ensuring equal opportunities: Conduct surveys on the transition from school to work to identify needs and formulate programmes to help young women and young men find and hold decent jobs. Ensure equal rights for and special support to young people whose gender, ethnicity or disability makes it more difficult for them to find jobs. Incorporate gender concerns into the general education system. Include gender concerns in policies for employment creation.

General Actions for ensuring equal opportunities: Provide job counselling for young women through employment services through materials and training. Develop specific gender sensitive programmes for education and training, to instruct young women in general education and vocational training as well as school graduates and “drop-outs” About “how to get a job.” Develop specific training programmes for young women to promote employment and self-employment through micro credit schemes and livelihood skills programmes.

Practical measures to Promote Equality between Young Women and Men: Measures for equal recruiting: Avoid indicating a preference for a certain group or sex unless it is clearly justified. Encourage everyone to apply through information channels that reach young women and young men. Use criteria, tests and interviews for selection that relate to job competencies and are the same for everyone.

Practical measures to Promote Equality between Young Women and Men: Measures for the equality at the workplace: Ensure respect and a healthy working environment free of harassment – including sexual harassment – for all workers. Ensure that workplaces are family friendly. Measures for positive action known as “positive discrimination” or “affirmative action” are practical temporary measures to combat the direct and indirect results of past discrimination.

Priorities in training and retraining for Girls and Women Adopting explicit equal opportunity goals and measures in vocational training systems; Including both males and females meaningfully in the full range of standard vocational training programmes rather than providing only traditionally female-oriented skills to girls and women; Revising all training curricula to avoid gender stereotyping and to promote equality between the sexes;

Priorities in training and retraining for Girls and Women Encouraging both boys and girls to enter non-traditional occupations in order to break existing patterns of job segregation – for example girls into scientific and technical fields and boys into jobs in the care sector; Establishing more effective linkages between training systems and labour markets so that girls and women are trained in employable skills alongside boys and men; Raising awareness among male workers in workplace- based training programmes about their role in sharing family responsibilities;