Although women’s participation in the paid labour market has increased in recent decades, gender discrimination in access to decent work persists. Women, particularly in the Global South, have the lowest participation in the labour market due to a number of factors. This course will guide you in assessing the Global South’s labour market to understand the impact of gender inequality in labour.

Discover how gender equality in labour contributes to sustainable development

You’ll delve into the major role the labour market plays in helping to achieve the Sustainable Development Agenda from the United Nations. With this understanding, you’ll explore the importance of decent work for sustainable development and examine how gender equality can boost the global economy.

Explore how intersectionality and gender roles impact women’s opportunities

On this course, you’ll explore how intersectionality and gender roles minimise women’s access to decent work, and examine how this labour often goes uncompensated. You’ll hear testimonies from women workers in Laos, Nepal and Rwanda to further investigate the labour market from a gender perspective.

Study with global experts

The educators who created this course have a wealth of experience in the fields of gender and women in the labour market. Their combined insight and expertise will provide you with the guidance to understand the impact of gender on the labour market and be empowered to advocate for decent work for all.

“Weeks”, “Chapters” and invitation to comment

Please note that this course was originally published by the University of Basel on FutureLearn. FutureLearn is a global platform offering online courses that encourage social learning, including discussions between learners. On FutureLearn, we added comment sections to certain steps and measured course durations in weeks rather than in chapters.

Here on Tales, we measure courses in chapters. These chapters are equivalent to the “weeks” on FutureLearn. So when you watch a video here and hear an educator talking about “weeks”, you’ll know that this was because the videos were geared towards FutureLearn’s set-up.

Another difference to FutureLearn is the comment option. The educators in the videos will sometimes invite you to discuss something in the comments section. If you don’t see a comment option here on Tales, then the course is not open to comments at this moment in time. But for certain periods of time announced in advance, this course will be open to comments.

The good news is that either way, you can freely access the course and all of its contents at any time. If the comment section is not open, why not write down your comments as you go through the course? That way you can keep track of how your knowledge changes. And should you be able to participate in one of the authors’ face-to-face courses, you can then refer back to your comments and discuss them with your peers.