经济学人213:女人们都做什么工作呢

 　　Women and jobs

　　女性和工作

　　What women do

　　女人们都做什么工作呢

　　Economic growth has surprisingly little effect on the wage gap

　　经济的增长出人意料地对工资差距没有多少影响

　　Sep 24th 2011 | from the print edition

　　Study hard, and you’ll earn more than me

　　“MEN are finished.” That was the proposition in a debate at New York University (NYU) on September 20th. Hardly. A World Bank report published the day before finds that, although particular groups of ill-educated young men are doing badly, and although women’s lives have improved a lot in the past 20 years, sexual inequality at work is remarkably¹ stubborn. Globally, women earn 10-30% less than men. They are also concentrated in “women’s” jobs. Annoyingly, economic growth does not seem to narrow the gap.

　　“男人们完了。”这是9月20日在纽约大学举办的一次辩论中的一个观点。这个说法很难成立。之前世界银行发布的一份报告显示，即便在某些群体中教育程度低的年轻男性生活情况糟糕，而且在过去二十年女人们的生活水平有了大幅的提高，职场中的性别不平等情况还是没怎么改变。全球来看，女人比男人少挣10%到30%。她们也主要集中在“女人的”职业里面。令人气恼的是，经济的增长似乎并没有带来差距的缩小。

　　This is surprising. You might expect that as countries get richer, women would become better educated and jobs requiring brute² strength would become less important. Rich countries also have larger public sectors³, where the wage gap is smaller. Yet overall, the gap is no smaller in rich countries such as Britain and the Netherlands than in poor ones such as the Philippines.

　　这真是让人惊讶。你也许会觉得随着国家变得富有，女人就能够获得更多的教育，而且需要消耗蛮力的工作也会变得不那么重要。富裕的国家还有更加庞大的公共部门，这些部门的工资性别差距要小一些。但是总体看来，在像英国、荷兰这样的富裕国家里，工资差距并不比贫穷的国家小。

　　More striking, there is little sign that women are moving into traditionally male occupations. Men utterly⁴ dominate such beefy industries as transport and mining. A hefty 11% of men work in construction; only 1% of women do.

　　让人更加惊奇的是，几乎没有迹象表明女人在逐渐进入传统男性行业。男人们完全统治着这些行业，比如运输和采矿业。多达11%的男人在建筑行业工作，而只有1%的女人也在这个行业里面。

　　Women cluster in communications, retail⁵ and public administration, including education and health. This is true regardless of national income. Looking at Bangladesh, Mexico and Sweden, the bank found that men and women tended to separate themselves into the same sorts of occupation in all three countries. (Bangladeshi shops and hotels, which employed disproportionately more men, were exceptions.)

　　不管国民收入多寡，女性都集中在通讯，零售和公共管理（包括教育和健康）领域。具体到孟加拉国、墨西哥和瑞典，世界银行发现在这三个国家男人和女人们都倾向于各自集中在相同的行业里面。（除了孟加拉国的商店和酒店雇佣了特别多的男人。）

　　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 qualified⁶ 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 allocate⁷ the same amount of time to paid work, housework and child care as Swedish men. Everywhere, this constrains⁸ 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。

1 remarkably   

ad.不同寻常地，相当地

参考例句：

• I thought she was remarkably restrained in the circumstances. 我认为她在那种情况下非常克制。
• He made a remarkably swift recovery. 他康复得相当快。

2 brute   

n.野兽，兽性

参考例句：

• The aggressor troops are not many degrees removed from the brute.侵略军简直象一群野兽。
• That dog is a dangerous brute.It bites people.那条狗是危险的畜牲，它咬人。

3 sectors   

n.部门( sector的名词复数 )；领域；防御地区；扇形

参考例句：

• Berlin was divided into four sectors after the war. 战后柏林分成了4 个区。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Industry and agriculture are the two important sectors of the national economy. 工业和农业是国民经济的两个重要部门。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

4 utterly   

adv.完全地，绝对地

参考例句：

• Utterly devoted to the people,he gave his life in saving his patients.他忠于人民，把毕生精力用于挽救患者的生命。
• I was utterly ravished by the way she smiled.她的微笑使我完全陶醉了。

5 retail   

v./n.零售；adv.以零售价格

参考例句：

• In this shop they retail tobacco and sweets.这家铺子零售香烟和糖果。
• These shoes retail at 10 yuan a pair.这些鞋子零卖10元一双。

6 qualified   

adj.合格的，有资格的，胜任的，有限制的

参考例句：

• He is qualified as a complete man of letters.他有资格当真正的文学家。
• We must note that we still lack qualified specialists.我们必须看到我们还缺乏有资质的专家。

7 allocate   

vt.分配，分派；把…拨给；把…划归

参考例句：

• You must allocate the money carefully.你们必须谨慎地分配钱。
• They will allocate fund for housing.他们将拨出经费建房。

8 constrains   

强迫( constrain的第三人称单数 )； 强使； 限制； 约束

参考例句：

• We'll ignore the continuity constrains. 我们往往忽略连续约束条件。
• It imposes constrains, restricting nature's freedom. 它具有限制自然界自由度的强制性。