The Latin America Region. Narrowing the gaps

Gender! A Partnership of Equals
Geneve: International Labour Office, 2000. 115 p.

The Latin America Region
Narrowing the gaps

In Latin America, the presence of women in the workforce has been rising significantly and consistently over the last few decades. Between 1960 and 1990, the number of economically active women more than tripled, progressing from 18 to 57 million, whereas the comparable figure for men did not even manage to double, rising from 80 to 147 million. The long-term trend is one of rapid increases in the influx of women into the labour market, together with a slight decline in the rate for male workers. In this way, the gap between the sexes in terms of their respective share of the workforce will narrow.

Above and beyond this quantitative increase, a significan qualitative change is taking place in the model of women in the workforce, which points toward a reduction in the differences formerly observed between men's and women's activity patterns. This qualitative change is creating an increasing divide between the reality of women's presence in the world of work and the image of women as a secondary workforce.

Evidence of qualitative change

Levels both of women's work activity and their unemployment are continuing to rise

An increase in the number of hours devoted by women to paid work, as well as in the number of years of their economically active lives (between 1970 and 1990: an average of 9 years)
Greater continuity in women's careers: there is a rise in the proportion of women who do not withdraw from the labour market for the purpose of bringing up children and remain economically active during the years with the highest incidence of child-bearing
A rising percentage of women as heads of household; this varies between 25 and 35% in the different countries of the region. Moreover, there are households in which women's income input is equal to, or higher than, that of men, a fact which goes undetected both in population censuses and in household surveys, given the generally utilized definition of head of household. Similarly, in countries where men's conditions of employment have improved, no departure of women from the labour market has been observed as would, however, be the case if they actually constituted some secondary workforce
A significant enhancement of the female workforce's level of education: women's average level of instruction is higher than that of men on the labour market, all of which challenges the idea of women having lower incomes due to a weaker educational background. In urban environments throughout Latin America in 1995, working women had an average of 9 years of education, whereas men had 8

Improved levels of education, combined with women's greater involvement in the workforce, have resulted in a major female presence in the professions and technical specializations; more than 50% in the urban zones of many countries of the region.

Despite higher education levels, however, women's wages remain significantly lower. In no Latin American country are men and women with the same educational background paid the same. Women's wages are generally lower than those of men whatever the relevant education levels, and the discrepancy widens as one climbs the educational ladder (the higher the level of education, the greater the wage gap between men and women).

Better education among the female workforce does, therefore, reflect a positive and a negative aspect with regard to their labour market status. Apart from testifying to a greater potential for skill acquisition, it also points to the greater obstacles encountered by women in their access to employment; they require significantly higher educational credentials than men in order to reach the same jobs or obtain the same incomes.

Salary differentials also indicate that the massive influx of women onto the labour market, as well as the qualitative changes observed in their activity patterns, have not been accompanied by any noteworthy decline in occupational inequalities between men and women. The majority of women's jobs are still concentrated in certain sectors of activity and grouped in a small number of occupations with a strong female presence. This compartmentalization remains at the heart of existing inequalities (including that of remuneration) between men and women in the labour market. There is still only modest access to jobs in the upper echelons of hierarchies for the majority of women workers.

A greater participation of women in labour markets in Latin America has proved to be an important factor enabling many families to overcome poverty. To the extent that the phenomenon is defined on the basis of family per capita incomes, an increase in the number of wage-earners per household can help to increase family income. According to certain estimates, approximately one-third of the total income in urban households where both members of a couple go out to work, is made up of the woman's earnings and, in one-fourth of two-parent households, the woman contributes 50% or more of the total household income. Nevertheless, major differences exist in women's labour market participation rates; it is specifically those from the poorest households who have the greatest difficulty finding jobs (because of low levels of education, skills and a lack of child-care support, for example and, hence, in making their contribution to escaping from the poverty trap.

Women are also especially hit by the problems experienced by the majority of Latin American economies in the generation of productive employment, as well as by the trend toward dwindling quality of employment - also observed in the region, and reflected, among other indicators, in the growing informal sector and job insecurity. They are over-represented in the urban and rural informal sector, as well as in certain sections of the formal labour market where social protection and security levels are more precarious (e.g., assembly work and rural seasonal work).

A breakdown of data regarding employment structures in 8 countries according to gender, identifies a few trends emerging between 1990 and 1996.

Surmounting the barriers

At a time when there is growing acknowledgment in Latin America (particularly among ILO constituents) of the importance of training and occupational skills as a key factor in raising productivity and the competitive status of the economy, as well as in improving the quality of employment, serious gender inequality survives with regard to access to apprenticeship and vocational training opportunities.

In order to overcome these persistent, recurrent inequalities between men and women in the world of work, it is vital for the goal of equality (and the elimination of a range of inequality-generating discriminatory mechanisms) to be incorporated explicitly into the design, implementation and evaluation of policies and programmes developed by the ILO and its constituents - and especially those programmes directed at combating poverty, generating employment and incomes and the provision of vocational training. This also presupposes the availability of improved gender-related statistics and indicators, as well as a more thorough analysis of a series of specific issues regarding the situation of working women and gender relations at work.

It is important to note that, during the course of the 1990s and, in particular, following the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, there has been growing concern on the part of governments and employers' and workers' organizations in the various countries of Latin America with regard to the implementation of programmes and policies to promote gender equity in the world of work. In an institutional context, major advances have also been registered, such as the creation and/or strengthening of government-sponsored offices for women's affairs, the elaboration of equality-of-opportunity programmes, the establishment of tripartite committees for the promotion of equality of opportunity in employment, and the setting up of specific departments by employers' and workers' organizations to deal with the issue. This constitutes a major challenge for the ILO, which must have the capacity to lend ever more effective and efficient support to the needs of its constituents.

Emerging trends, 1990-96

Women's unemployment rates are systematically higher than those for men in the countries of the region (8.5% for the entire workforce in 1998, 7.6% for men and 9.9% for women)
The shift of employment into the informal sector is more pronounced in the case of women. The percentage of women in informal jobs out of total women's employment is considerably higher than equivalent figures for the workforce as a whole. This difference became more marked over the first half of the decade⁽¹⁾
The degree of insecurity of women's employment within the informal sector is more acute. On the one hand, the burden of domestic work is much greater for women; on the other, their presence in microenterprises (a subsector in which it is possible to find better quality jobs, more readily integrated into the formal sector) is fairly low, and increased very little, contrary to the trend observed among employed persons taken as a whole

1. In 1990, 59% of women employed in urban zones worked in the informal sector; in 1996, the figure rose to 65%. In respect of the total number of employed persons, the figures are, respectively, 50% and 53%. The ILO definition of "informal sector" encompasses domestic work, unskilled self-employed workers as well as wage-earners and owners of micro enterprises (enterprises with fewer than 5 or 10 workers, depending upon available data).

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Gender! A Partnership of Equals Geneve: International Labour Office, 2000. 115 p.

Gender! A Partnership of Equals
Geneve: International Labour Office, 2000. 115 p.