Vocational education and training - VET

Every manager worries at some point that their best employees are eyeing the door. What can you do to convince your team members to stay? How do you assess whether they’re engaged? What actions can you take and conversations can you have to head off thoughts of leaving? And when a valuable employee says they have another job offer, will countering really keep them around?

Australians are not facing a dystopian future of rising unemployment, aimless career paths and empty offices, as some futurists claim. Quite the opposite in fact, according to a new report.

In an account that would apply to most other countries around the globe, the report’s writers argue that the “future of work is human – provided those humans use technology to their advantage to create more meaningful work”.

This paper seeks to shed light on the current challenges faced by eight selected sub-Saharan African countries, namely Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Mozambique, Niger, Nigeria, and Sierra Leone, in achieving the integration of women into the labour market through education and training. 
This paper aims to present a diag-nosis of women’s situation in terms of their integration into the labour market. It will focus mainly on the role played by educa-tion and training in attaining gender parity and identify practices that will potentially address the marginalization of women in the labour market.Abstract

This paper seeks to shed light on the current challenges faced by eight selected sub-Saharan African countries, namely Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Mozambique, Niger, Nigeria, and Sierra Leone, in achieving the integration of women into the labour market through education and training. In almost all these countries – except Sierra Leone – women are less likely to be employed than men. Moreover, most employed women have insecure, low-paying, and informal jobs. In addition, women performing these jobs are hardly protected against job losses. The lack of protection is also apparent in times of illness and when they are ageing. More women are concentrated in occupations and sectors that are characterized by low status and low remuneration. Furthermore, they continue to be underrepresented and excluded from sectors and jobs that involve greater responsibility, pay more salaries, and offer potential for growth. The reasons for the under-representation of women in prestigious jobs are varied and are rooted on factors such as gender norms and stereotypes, unpaid care at home, and legal frameworks that are unfavourable to women. This paper aims to present a diagnosis of women’s situation in terms of their integration into the labour market. It will focus mainly on the role played by education and training in attaining gender parity and identify practices that will potentially address the marginalization of women in the labour market

Nurturing girls’ education at basic and secondary levels of learning, and offering increased support to women already in academia are some of the strategies that will ensure greater inclusivity in the African research sector.

While women were not doing as well as men in research and academia in terms of absolute numbers and in terms of leadership positions, opportunities to thrive in universities were relatively more even.

The energy, resources, and infrastructure sectors are low on a crucial source of talent: women. New data shed light on the size of the problem—and point to potential solutions.

New job opportunities await women at work, but they also face new challenges overlaid on long-established ones in the age of automation.

This Issue of BUWA! offers feminist critiques of the current discourses framing the future of work in Africa. This is a very timely and critical theme given that there is a marked interest globally in better understanding and predicting the future of work. A number of research institutions, think tanks and others interested in labour and occupational issues have since invested in research and created platforms that have enabled debate on this issue.