International Women’s Day 2006

Eschborn, 6 March 2006. “What men can do, we have long been capable of,” announces a female Chinese soccer player as she confidently slides the ball past the male goalkeeper into the net. The TV spot is part of a project in the cities of Nanjin and Benxi in eastern China that is being implemented on behalf of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ) GmbH – German Technical Cooperation – and the Chinese Ministry of Labour. In the spirit of the motto of this year’s International Women’s Day, “Women in decision-making: meeting challenges, creating change”, the project Reintegration of Unemployed Women into the Labour Force is attempting to improve women’s opportunities for a profession and career.

With resounding success. “Around 20,000 people have found a job directly via our project, and as many as 60,000 benefit indirectly from what we do,” states GTZ project manager Michaela Baur. Newly introduced job market analyses, individual job counselling with “potential analysis” for job-seekers, vocational training, business start-up possibilities and reform of the job placement centres in Nanjing and Benxi are what have made this success possible. Internships, which were virtually unknown in the past, are now just one of the ways of getting started in professional life. The placement centres now work closely with private companies to establish at an early stage which professions are in demand. Vocational training is then geared to that.

“This is how we have succeeded in sustainably improving the situation of women on the job market in both of these cities. Our trump card, though, is the introduction of temporary employment,” says Baur. In China, too, employers are reluctant to issue contracts for an unlimited period, even though they need the workers. Illegal hiring is often the upshot – with no contract and no social security. “Everybody benefits from the temporary contract model. Employers welcome the flexibility, and the employees finally have a legal job contract, social security and regular pay,” says Baur. There are now more than 200 firms providing temporary workers in Nanjing. Around 30 of them have joined together in a trade association and take care that the social standards in the jobs they offer are acceptable. These companies alone employ more than 70,000 people. And contrary to all expectations, the temporary jobs are turning out to be quite steady. “A project survey has shown that of 6000 employees, 93 percent are still working for the same employer after six months,” Baur reports. “We owe our success to the fact that right from the start we got all of the relevant actors together at one table – the local job placement centres, private companies and the ministries.”

The Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ) GmbH - German Technical Cooperation - is an international cooperation enterprise for sustainable development with worldwide operations. It has provided viable, forward-looking solutions for political, economic, ecological and social development in a globalised world for more than 30 years. GTZ’s corporate objective is to improve people's living conditions on a sustainable basis.

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