For working women, job equality elusive.

In 2003, 40 percent of the world's 2.8 billion workers were women, an increase of nearly 200 million from a decade earlier, according to Global Employment Trends for Women 2004, an analysis of female employment by the International Labour Office (ILO).

At the same time, another report

shows that women's share of professional jobs increased by just 0.7 percent between 1996 and 1999 and between 2000 and 2002. These figures come from the ILO's Breaking through the glass ceiling: Women in management--Update 2004, which shows that women were markedly underrepresented in management compared to their overall share of employment. Women's share of managerial positions in almost 60 countries ranged from 20 percent to 40 percent.

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"Unless progress is made in taking women out of poverty by creating productive and decent employment, the Millennium Development Goals of halving poverty by 2015 will remain out of reach in most regions of the world," said ILO Director-General Juan Somavia in a statement.

The ILO, founded in 1919, is a United Nations agency that seeks to promote social justice and internationally recognized human and labor rights.

In 2003, according to the global employment trends report, the worldwide unemployment rate was slightly higher for women (6.4 percent) than for men (6.1 percent) in the labor pool. More than 77 million women who were willing to work and looking for jobs were without employment, according to the report. Women were less likely to have regular wages and salaried employment than men and tended to wind up in industries such as agriculture that have little, if any, social security benefits and a high degree of vulnerability.

The report showed that there were only 63 women per every 100 men in the workforce worldwide. The gap was largest in the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia.

The report established a link between fertility and the rate of female workforce participation. Countries with low birthrates had higher levels of female workforce participation than countries with high birthrates.

Long-standing policies supporting working mothers led to high rates of women's overall share of professional jobs in Eastern Europe and states formerly part of the Soviet Union. South Asian and Middle Eastern nations lagged considerably, which was attributable "to societal views of women's labor force participation and to women prioritizing family responsibilities," according to the report on women in management.

Management must work with HR professionals to devise strategies that facilitate women's progression to managerial and executive positions, wrote Prue Hopkins, researcher with the ILO Bureau for Gender Equality. "Elements also need to be added to ensure that women are not penalized financially for motherhood (for example, the elimination of retirement plan forfeitures for career breaks, the provision of unpaid leave of absence with a guarantee of a job on return to work, and the promotion of women who work part time)."