LocationsA social protection snapshot from Zhouqu County, China
Moving Towards Higher Quality Female Employment
January 6, 2022
Female workers in a factory processing the Yangdujun mushroom variety, a major cash crop in Zhouqu
UNDP
For most of her life Yang Liuju was a housewife in the mountainous village of Luojiayu, situated in the heart of mainland China, in the landlocked Gansu province. Like many of her peers she did not receive a particularly high level of education and mostly spent her days farming, looking after family and children. When money was tight, she would supplement the household income by occasionally working for other local families or picking up the odd shift of manual labor in a construction site. At most, her efforts would yield around 1,000 yuan ($155 USD) a month.
However, Yang Liuju’s life changed three years ago when she joined the locally based Tian He Mushroom Company. Today she is a team leader in the factory’s compost processing room, leading a team of six other female workers, planting and processing the Yangdujun mushroom variety, a major cash crop in Zhouqu. Having worked for Tian He Mushroom Company consistently over the years, she is now a formal employee and earns 3,600 RMB per month with full social security coverage.
Yang Liuju’s successful transition from working ad-hoc in the informal sector, to wage-based work in the formal sector was supported by the UNDP Resilient Community Building and Sustainable Development Project in Zhouqu County. The project works closely with local government to promote broad-based economic development and create more high-quality jobs in the formal sector through its support to local, small enterprises.
It is often not easy for women working in the informal sector to move into the formal one. Two of the major challenges affecting their ability to transition out of informal work are a lack of relevant skills and limited access to labor markets. Women informal workers often have lower levels of education and vocational skills, leading to a vicious circle of low income and subsequently low investment in gaining new skills. Improving the skill level of informal economy workers is therefore key to raising their ability to gain better access to the formal employment market.
The UNDP project in Zhouqu aims to address these issues by easing women’s entry into the formal workforce. For example, the project identified morel mushroom farming among others, as a profitable, yet simple, low-cost and less labor-intensive source of employment for the local women. It then developed and organized vocational training activities on mushroom farming, including seed making, mushroom maintenance, harvesting and processing to ensure the women had the right skills to be employed.
By providing support with initial funding, business development and technical advice, the project has been able to help Tian He Mushroom Company expand its business and generate jobs for fifteen housewives, including Yang Liuju,as well as the seasonal work for around 120 women. In addition to the Tian He Mushroom Company, UNDP also worked with two other local companies that have also begun training and employing local women.
The COVID-19 pandemic also brought home the importance of strengthening female employment in the post-pandemic era, since women (and especially economically disadvantaged women) were the most impacted by its socio-economic fallout. This was due to a series of pre-existing vulnerabilities such as having a higher rate of illiteracy, as well as limited access and control over assets, resources, and services.
When women find better quality employment it is not only, they themselves that benefit. Often the entire family experiences greater economic empowerment and the next generation’s prospects also improve. For example, inspired by his enterprising wife, Yang Liuju’s husband now works seasonally in the processing room as well.
In all, Yang Liuju says working at the mushroom company has brought multiple benefits. "The company site is just a few minutes from home, so I can still take care of my children by going to and from work on time. Together with my husband, we can now earn seven to eight thousand yuan ($1,090-1,250 USD) per month.” Similar to Yanh Liuju, many women have benefited from UNDP’s support, especially vulnerable women and families who were rendered unemployed due to covid.
The intervention has shown that economic empowerment provides the much- needed social protection that can uplift the lives of women and their families to live equal, dignified, and respectable lives
Authors: Jiawen Chen, Zhizhuo Shen, Rong Shi, Tish Ahluwalia, Fei Zheng (UNDP China)