A/HRC/41/33
discrimination in the family and in education that springs from or embodies the different
stereotypes, which subsequently contributes to limiting their potential to exercise their
capabilities and pursue the career and life choices available to them.
57.
The constraints on women’s choices and opportunities are a product of structural
inequalities and discriminatory policies and institutions that fail to tackle adequately the
injustices produced through globalized macroeconomic and political factors, including the
privatization of public goods and the shrinking of the welfare state. Those factors further
reinforce, and are perpetuated by, localized and particular discriminatory cultural and social
norms that also engender different systems of oppression for different groups of women.
58.
Discrimination, stereotyping, unpaid care work and lack of education limit the jobs
that women can do, pushing them towards low-skilled positions and the informal job sector
with exploitative workplace conditions. The overwhelming majority of women’s jobs are in
the informal sector and therefore lack basic entitlements and protections. Thus, women’s
employment may in some cases constitute a form of deprivation of liberty. That may be the
case when women who work in industry or in agriculture are provided with housing under
restrictive circumstances or subject to forced or bonded labour (see A/73/139 and Corr. 1).
Likewise, there are home-based productions for global supply chains where the “employer”
may in fact be a husband or other male relative who demands a certain amount of
production in exploitative conditions amounting to deprivation of liberty. Such working
conditions are also of particular concern for domestic workers, the majority of whom are
women, who may find themselves unable to leave their place of employment.
59.
Migrant women face particular risks, being largely pushed into unskilled,
undervalued and lower-paid labour sectors in unregulated spaces, such as private homes.
Women migrant domestic workers may be deprived of support networks and services and
may face confiscation of their passports by their employers. Immigration laws that require
working for a specific employer, such as the kafalah system in some countries in the
Middle East, have been grounds of abuse and have incurred criminal penalties.34 Owing to
limited pathways for regular migration opportunities for women, irregular status becomes a
contributing factor to deprivation of liberty of migrant women. Restrictions related to
“protective” stereotypes that aim to prevent women from legally migrating, on the grounds
that they may become victims of trafficking or forced prostitution, push women to seek
alternative (irregular) migration channels and consequently increase their vulnerability to
forced or bonded labour, confinement and other human rights violations.
60.
Lack of choice and opportunities push women into the realm of human trafficking,
contemporary forms of slavery and exploitative surrogacy arrangements that may result in
varied forms of confinement, exploitation and violence. In certain countries women are
kept in camps or so called “baby factories” for surrogacy purposes or forced impregnation,
while in many more countries women are smuggled into brothels that they are not at liberty
to leave.
61.
Reduced job opportunities, coupled with a lack of social protection, may be a factor
in women’s criminalization and eventual imprisonment. Several stakeholders pointed to the
lack of decent work opportunities as one of the major reasons for women’s involvement in
drug trafficking, certain forms of prostitution/sex work and other irregular businesses,
resulting in them coming into conflict with the criminal justice system. Women who are
incarcerated for their involvement in illicit economic ventures identify such activities as
being the only opportunities available to them to provide for their families, given their
financial constraints and family responsibilities. In several States, transgender women
disproportionately engage in prostitution/sex work, owing to the limited opportunities
available to them because of discrimination, and face criminalization or other types of
restriction of liberty as a result of such activities.
62.
Deeply embedded systemic racism leads to racial minority women being subjected
to socioeconomic exclusion and poverty (see A/HRC/35/10), with a heightened risk of
incarceration, including, inter alia, for increased involvement in drug trafficking, mostly at
34
14
See, for example, A/HRC/26/35/Add.1, A/HRC/35/29/Add.2 and A/HRC/39/52.