equitable downsizing in Vietnam
- Categories
- Article/Artikel
- Magazine Title
- Promising approaches to engendering development
- Magazine Year
- 2004
- Thesaurus
- arbeid, werknemers, inkomen, loopbanen, Vietnam
- Description
- Downsizing programs are an important part of many public sector reforms supported by the World Bank. This issue describes how this was done in Vietnam and provides links to a general utility, that can be used to design equitable severance packages in any country. Downsizing can have differing effects on male and female employees for two reasons. First, because women and men typically occupy different positions, layoffs are rarely distributed evenly among male and female employees. Second, there tend to be systematic differences in the welfare loss experienced by laid-off men compared to laid-off women. Experience in a range of countries shows that, in most cases, women suffer greater losses than men in both income and non-monetary benefits. Women who are laid off from public sector jobs often have more difficulty than their male colleagues finding a new job. In Vietnam, a year after layoffs, only 14% of women had found new jobs, compared to 22% of men