Minding the Gender Gap in Latin America Johanna Mendelson Forman - VOXXI
go to original January 24, 2014

When half the population is faced with wage discrimination, the development of any country suffers. From the looks of it, the wage gap between women and men in Latin America is alarming.

This was the central message of a new report released this week by several United Nations agencies (the International Labor Organization, the Economic Commission on Latin America, the United Nations Development Program and the Food and Agricultural Organizations) focusing on the women’s wage gap and other labor issues involving women.

Decent Work and Gender Equality discusses how development is compromised by “gender inequalities that are a direct consequence of traditional views on the place and role that women should occupy in society—views based on prejudice, discrimination and disregard for the progress the region has made and its effects on societies.  Societies must set out to become more inclusive and egalitarian in order to overcome.”

While women’s economic status varies from country to country in the Americas, one feature in every country studied was that there are also huge inequalities among women themselves.

Women earn between 60 percent and 90 percent of men’s average income.  At the same time, the percentage of women heads of households grew from 22 percent in 1990 to 31 percent in 2008, according to the United Nations.

Moreover, women in the region dedicate a greater share of time than men to unremunerated activities that are characteristic of transitional roles – 86 percent in Guatemala, 81 percent in Costa Rica, and 74 percent in Mexico and Uruguay, according to a World Bank report on gender.

In Latin America and the Caribbean, women’s experiences and prospects differ greatly based on their ethnicity (e.g. indigenous or Afro-descendant), their age (young or elderly), where they live (urban or rural areas), their citizenship status (residents of their own country or migrants) and whether or not they have children.

Read the rest at VOXXI

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