00:00There are many issues plaguing the regional workforce.
00:04Research from the Cipriani College of Labor and Cooperative Studies presented by Dr. Sadiqa Khan,
00:10Program Dean of the Interdisciplinary Studies, show some intriguing trends like gender wage caps.
00:18Five of the eight regional countries from which data was collected don't mandate equal pay for equal work.
00:25Then there's legislation which restricts women from working in certain industrial jobs.
00:32Despite women's academic achievements, they struggle to translate this into equal opportunities in the workforce.
00:41So while women had a considerably higher tertiary level completion rate,
00:46it didn't translate into a higher labor force participation.
00:50And what we found was that there's a continued struggle of women to secure formal employment.
00:57Men, we learn, continue to earn more than women for the same jobs in countries like Barbados and Jamaica.
01:04And discrimination at times locks certain gender groups like the LGBTQI out of the workforce.
01:12We found that members of this community face discrimination in employment, housing, health care, marriage, inheritance, and other social protections.
01:23Individuals often have had to hide their gender identities to secure a job and face widespread verbal harassment, creating an environment of fear.
01:31In fact, in a lot of cases when we had to conduct interviews, it had to be done via audio and they asked for to remain anonymous.
01:40And that just goes to show the extent of which fear was predominating the entire discourse.
01:47But that's not all.
01:48Age and the advent of artificial intelligence leads to the fear of being phased out or replaced.
01:55And still, there's another group almost voiceless in the world of work.
02:00While, you know, it was already terrible that if you are a member of the community, of the PWD community that is personal with disabilities, what we found was that if you were female and you were PWD, you were doubly disenfranchised in the world of work.
02:18While Dr. Khan says there have been strides and inroads, there's much more work to be done before the workplace becomes a level playing field for all.
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