By Sara Zuluaga Garcia
América Writing, (EFE).- A salary difference that oscillates between 15% and 30% and a burden of care historically placed in the hands of wives, daughters and mothers are some of the great economic barriers that women face in Latin America.
Data released by different organizations have shown, for years now, a difference between the employment and monetary growth of women and that of men for reasons, mostly linked to stereotypes and burdens that have been assumed as “feminine”.
Wages
The average monthly salary of men is between 20% and 30% higher than that of women in Argentina, the Cippec Social Protection coordinator, Florencia Caro Sachetti, told EFE, who details that 15% of the workforce Female workers work in domestic service, the lowest paid sector of the economy, and with an informality of 78%.
The wage gap in this country is 15%, equivalent to about 54 dollars more for men “doing the same job,” points out Carmen Urquilla, coordinator of the Labor and Economic Justice program of the Organization of Salvadoran Women for Peace (Ormusa).
Meanwhile, in Bolivia “there is not much talk” about economic violence. The available statistics are “limited” and are often linked to physical and psychological abuse, Tania Sánchez, director of the Women’s Coordinator, an entity that brings together some twenty institutions that defend gender equality, told EFE.
The wage gap in this country “has narrowed in recent years.” According to data from the National Institute of Statistics (INE) it is between 26% and 27%. By comparison, in Mexico, this gap is estimated to be 14% in 2022, according to the Mexican Institute for Competitiveness (IMCO).
In Brazil, the most recent official data (2019), released by the Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), indicate that that year women received, on average, 77.7% of the average income of men.
Among the factors that affect salary inequality, the experts refer to maternity and the absence of public policies that facilitate the linking of women to the labor market.
“These are problems related to the possibility of taking care of their children,” Mónica Sacramento, program coordinator of the NGO Criola, explains to EFE.
gender stereotypes
According to Unesco, Mexican women perform 73% of household work and unpaid care, and men only 27%. In addition, 92% of unpaid caregivers in this country are women, according to data from the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (Inegi).
There is a strong load of stereotypes behind the data: in Argentina, women dedicate 7.5 hours a day to work and 6.5 hours to care for the home, while men spend hours at work and only 3.5 hours. at home, making it even more difficult for women to climb the job ladder.
In addition, paternity leave is two days and maternity leave is 90 days.
“Misleading improvement”
Colombia, for its part, has a reduction from 18% to 12% of the gender gap between 2003 and 2018, and theoretically, women earn only 6% less than men, according to data from the year 2020 of the National Administrative Department. of Statistics (DANE).
“But you have to be careful,” Paula Herrera, an associate professor of Economics at the Javeriana University, warns EFE: “A pandemic occurred in the middle,” which meant that “women who had more informal jobs were the most affected.” For this reason, the women who “remained employed were more formal, that is, they had higher salaries”, which can distort the statistics.
a difficult horizon
The reality shown by the figures is not only detrimental to the development of women’s autonomy, but also has consequences for companies, says María del Pilar López, a historian, economist and professor at the Universidad de los Andes in Colombia, who ensures that “this impacts the business sector on issues such as innovation and the fact of having diverse work environments.”
According to the study “El Salvador, a country of care”, prepared by the organizations Fudecen and Oxfam, 70.19% of men are of working age, a percentage that in the case of women is in the 75.02%.
Despite the fact that the number of women of working age in the Central American country is higher, only 45.40% are among the “economically active population”, while men reach 76.80%, says the aforementioned report. .
Regarding unemployment, it affects 17.4% of Colombian women, 6.4 percentage points more than in men. In addition, there are ten million women out of the labor force, of which 45% do not consider getting a job because they attend to family responsibilities.
It must be understood that this is urgent “in a context in which economic dependence and insufficient income are factors (…) that explain the permanence of women in violent environments,” emphasizes María del Pilar López.
