The Inter -American Development Bank (IDB) has recently published the guide to promote gender equality in companies in Latin America and the Caribbean. It is a road map to develop strategies that reduce gender equality gaps in companies and a very useful compendium of best practices in the region. It is also a solid data count regarding what we lack to achieve gender equity in Latin American companies and what we can win as a society and economy if we manage to advance. The disparity is important: while 90% of men between 25 and 65 years participate in labor markets, women only in 65%. The gender wage gap in the Latin American region is 12%, but adjusted to factors such as educational level, field of study and work experience rises to 22 percent.
According to the sources cited in the study of the IDB, in Latin America, men carry out 11 hours a week of unpaid work, while women 22. Unpaid care in the region represent 26.5% of GDP; Women provide 17.5 percentage points, that is, 2.8 times more than men. That means that a good part of the inequality derives from the disparity in the unpaid care work that women perform in relation to men, so offering care services can change the scenario.
That was evident in the Covid crisis, when the care services were affected very severely; At that time, women suffered 56% of employment losses, when they represented 42% of the workforce.
Data for Mexico show that the availability of care services for working women with children aged 0 to 3 years increased by 4.5 percentage points their participation in the labor market. Studies for Chile also show that having a child care center near the work center significantly reduces labor rotation rates. That is, care services can make a difference in favor of the best labor participation of women.
The IDB study offers evidence that women led by women are three times smaller than those led by men, and generally operate in less innovative sectors, such as retail trade, many times in the informal sector. Only 1% of the associated spending of large companies is aimed at companies led by women, when a quarter of the companies in the region are directed by them.
Currently, 60% of the university degrees in the region are obtained by women; However, their talent is not fully used, since they are underrepresented in management bodies, in entrepreneurship and formal employment, so the closure of gender gaps in the workplace can generate profits between 4 and 15 points of GDP, depending on the country.
