Research reveals 40% of women in Georgia are economically inactive

Employed women receive 35% smaller salaries than men, reveals the study. Photo by N. Alavidze/Agenda.ge.
Agenda.ge, 08 Dec 2017 - 16:22, Tbilisi,Georgia

More than 40 percent of women in Georgia are economically inactive, while employed women receive 35 percent smaller salaries than men, reveals the latest study by the United Nations Development Programme and Union Sapari.

Deputy Resident Representative at UNDP, Shombi Sharp, who presented the research in Tbilisi said that "paradoxically, women are often more qualified than men” in Georgia. He said that there is a large number of "unused” resources - women – in Georgia and the Georgian economy lacks this resource.

Georgia loses about 11 percent of the country’s gross domestic product. We recommend to strengthen cooperation between government, non-governmental sector and business sector to improve the existing situation. This will happen with the support of the international organisations in order Georgia to develop a unified state policy for women's economic strengthening,” said Sharp.

Meanwhile, executive director of Sapari, Baia Pataraia stated that only 17 percent of women won agricultural lands in Georgia as they do not have access to the resources and accordingly are not involved in economy.

The National Statistics Office of Georgia (Geostat) this month published data about Georgia’s business sector activities, which said Georgian businesses employed about 643,900 people in quarter three (Q3) of 2017, of which 40.1 percent were women and 59.9 percent were men.

The average monthly salary for a person employed in the business sector in Q3 of 2017 was 1,143.5 GEL. This was an increase of 131 GEL y/y.

Meanwhile, the average monthly salary for women in the business sector was 837.2 GEL, which is 98.2 GEL more compared to 2016.