The constitutional reform of noun equality between women and men, which includes the eradication of the gender wage gap, is already in force. But this modification is only the starting point for a series of changes to secondary legislation to guarantee a level playing field in the labor market.
“It is as if it were a shelter or umbrella that puts the issue on the agendais a great objective from which public policies and different actions can be derived. But today as it is, nothing is going to change, because the Federal Labor Law has requested equal treatment, what changes is that the phrase and the phenomenon are put at the center,” says Fátima Masse, co-founder of the firm Noubi. Advisors.
The constitutional reform promoted by the president Claudia Sheinbaum included modifications to article 123 (in both sections) of the Magna Carta to establish the obligation for secondary legislation to have “mechanisms aimed at reducing and eradicating the gender wage gap.”
The Congress of the Union has a term of 90 days to harmonize laws secondary schools, that means that in the following months there will be new reforms, including projects that help guarantee equal pay and greater labor participation for women.
The deputy Maiella Gomez Maldonadopresident of the Labor and Social Security Commission, affirms that secondary reforms are part of the priorities for the coming months, and although the points to be addressed have not yet been defined, she does not rule out evaluating previously presented projects.
“It is important to put it on a work table (…) it is a topic for which we must seek the best alternativesthere is a lot to do in that matter. Of course there will be issues that could have been important in the previous legislature and perhaps were left unfollowed or could not be addressed due to the workload,” the legislator acknowledges.
In the last two legislatures there were various efforts to strengthen female labor participation and the eradication of gender pay gapIn fact, both the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies approved reform packages with this objective. In the Upper House, for example, the modifications included the creation of a Public System for Monitoring Salary Practices and Labor Standards under the responsibility of the Ministry of Labor and Social Welfare.
In both cases, the reforms were pending in the reviewing Chamber. Other topics that were also placed on the agenda, but did not conclude their process, were the expansion of paternity leave, the harmonization of legislation with the ILO Convention 190 on violence at work, the regulatory framework to create the National Care System and the protection of employment for women one year after giving birth.
For Verónica Hernández Guadarrama, executive director of IDEIB Consulting, the constitutional reform of substantive equality “is like a house in black work, the foundations have already been laid, which are the constitutional architecturebut the structural details are missing. In a second stage, everything that was included in the Constitution must be harmonized.”
However, an important point in the harmonization of secondary legislation, the specialist believes, is the diagnosis of the impact of the reforms and the allocation of sufficient budget for public policies. “This will not happen overnight, it will be a gradual process.”
The Mexican State’s quest to improve women’s labor participation and equal pay is not new. In 2012, the reform of the Federal Labor Law included a series of provisions focused on this matter, with these changes creating paternity leavethe request for pregnancy certificates to access employment was prohibited, breaks during the breastfeeding period were regulated, the obligation to prevent and have a protocol against pregnancy was established. bullying and harassment at workamong other points.
However, the figures show that despite the legal modifications, Mexico has made slow progress in closing the wage gap. In 20 years, the difference between the labor income of women and men has barely decreased by 0.4 percentage points; They continue to receive 85 pesos for every 100 pesos they earn, according to an analysis by the Mexican Institute for Competitiveness (IMCO).
And where to start?
From Fátima Masse’s perspective, the second step is paternity leave. Among all the pending reforms, this is perhaps the highest impact subject to advance equality in the labor market, including remuneration.
“This is part of a structural discrimination that is largely triggered by the difference in the time dedicated to care. The first topic that is in the freezer is paternity leaveand that must be dusted off quickly because it is the best tool, and probably the only one that the labor market has, to influence household arrangements, what it seeks is a balance in how care is distributed,” says the specialist.
According to an analysis Mexico, How Are We Going? (MCV), the female workforce allocates 35 hours per week to paid work, this is 20% less than what is invested by men. But in household and care tasks unpaid, the balance is not only reversed, it is disproportionately inverse: they allocate 42 hours per week to these activities, that is 121% more than men.
“The 20-day proposal sounds good, there would still be a big disparity with the 84 days that women have as maternity leave, but it is a important advance and send a signal. The next step that is not contemplated, but is worth considering, is for the government to cover paternity leaves so that they are leaves because today the rules of the game are different, it depends on the employer that you have those days, and with that it opens the door to discretion,” says the economist.
For her part, Verónica Hernández Guadarrama indicates that a second important step will be the salary transparency mechanisms. “These issues are linked to what is needed to eradicate pay inequality between women and men. “It is a big issue, it is not a minor one.”
Fatima Masse agrees with that. For the specialist, it is important that companies start with a diagnosis that allows them to know the dimension of their gender pay gap. “The first question that businessmen and women should ask themselves is:how big is your pay gap?, and at least they will have concrete information to start with.”
In that sense, adds Verónica Hernández, there is a starting point with regulations such as 025 on labor equality and non-discrimination or 035 on psychosocial risk factors at work, among which are workplace violence. “The reform will not be isolated, there are already many things with which it can be linked, it is just a matter of creating synergies with what we already have and with what needs to be created.”
