Fighting female unemployment
The number of registered unemployed people in Timor-Leste is around 20 thousand. To face this situation, the Government has been developing several programmes that, on one hand, provide more capacity to the Timorese workers and, on the other hand, promote employment. Improving human resource capacity is one of the programmes in which the IV Constitutional Government is investing.There are several programmes to help students and workers – such as scholarships, in several different areas, so the Timorese can study abroad or take courses given in Timor-Leste – that aim in giving capacity to the new generations, which are the most affected by unemployment, as reminded by Maria Filomena Babo Martins, SEPI Head of Department of Training and Education: “unemployment mainly affects the youngsters. There isn’t any data regarding gender – we don’t know how many female youngsters or how many male youngsters are part of the unemployment statistics – but we know that youngsters are the most affected ones. In my point of view, women are very affected by unemployment, due to the high rate of illiteracy.
The literacy programme, carried out by the Ministry of Education, in the whole country, is contributing to the decrease of the illiteracy rate. Maria Filomena Martins states that the results can be seen, in what concerns women: ‘’now there are women that already know how to sign their name. This means that they already can, for example, receive their retirement pensions, signing their name on the sheet, without having to resort to their fingerprint. And that is a motive of pride and of a certain independence. We have seen, with relative frequency, that women want to develop themselves. This is why SEPI has the Women’s Economic Strengthening program and also the cooking program, which has a double objective: on one side to teach new cooking techniques to women, and one other side (and more importantly in this case) to stimulate men to actively participate in the house work. These programs help women to understand they have the same rights as men”.
