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World Bank: Challenges and opportunities for gender equity in Latin America and the Caribbean. March 2003.

This regional gender diagnostic is based on gender studies conducted in several countries and on the available information from the Gender Unit database. The National Diagnostics for Latin American and Caribbean Countries are available at: www.worldbank.org/tacgender. At the end of this report there is a list containing the information sources used in this document. María Elena Ruiz Abril wrote this report with the collaboration of Ayelen Banegas in data processing.

Women in Latin America and the Caribbean have achieved great progress in terms of gender equity, but the traditional social patterns still constrain their participation in the labour market and families use their resources against poverty in an inefficient way, states the new World Bank study.

Challenges and opportunities for gender equity in Latin America and the Caribbean was elaborated to commemorate the International Women Day on March 8th. The report states that women have achieved improvements in terms of education and access to the labour market. However, it points out that there is much to be done in terms of poverty and social exclusion, reproductive health and domestic violence.

"In spite of the progress made over the last 20 years, gender inequalities are still an obstacle to the full development of the countries of the region", point out Maria Valeria Pena, director of the Gender Unit of the World Bank for Latin America and the Caribbean. "Inequality is translated into losses derived from the absence of women in economic activities, losses of human capital derived from maternal mortality and drop out from schools by young pregnant women and children and social and economic costs derived from violence against women."

The study, that describes the most important changes in the women conditions in Latin America in the last decades and the challenges both for the region and for each particular country, states that although women participation in the formal economy has increased in a continuos way, there are still obstacles that affect mostly rural areas and indigenous women.

In fact, women participation in the labour market is still very inferior to men participation. In Brazil, 56% of women participates in the labour market; in Chile, 44%; in Colombia, 56%; in Mexico, 43% and in Peru, 55%, while in all these countries men participation is over 77%.

Although the wage gap has decreased considerably in many countries such as Honduras, Venezuela, Brazil, Colombia, Argentina and Mexico, women earn less than men in all the Latin American countries except in Costa Rica. In Argentina, women earn 98% of the men salary, in Mexico 89%, in Colombia 84%, in Peru 80%, in Brazil and Chile 77%, in El Salvador 74% and in Nicaragua 64%.

Among the factors that contribute to this phenomena, the report points out the massive participation of women in the service sector, which tends to be worse paid, the fact that women are mainly in charge of taking care of the family, and, as a result, they have more entries and re-entries to the labour market and they choose part time jobs.

"Although Latin American women have achieved almost the same levels of education than men, and they have even done better than men in terms of education in some countries, they still have less participation in the labour market and earn less than men", pointed out María Elena Ruiz Abril, author of the World Bank Report. "It is a fundamental issue that must be approached by public policies".

This state of affairs is more acute for rural women since they face, also, the higher rates of fertility, higher number of dependants and absence of access to land. Yet, the report also shows that the access to land has significantly increased in countries such as Colombia, Costa Rica, Honduras, Nicaragua, Chile and El Salvador. Mexico, however, is the country which presents the biggest gender gap in terms of land owning, where women represent only 21% of the landowners.

The report reveals that women, particularly old women and household heads are more vulnerable to poverty. Also, discrimination in terms of access to education and health places indigenous women in disadvantage to struggle against poverty and social exclusion.

"To combat poverty in the Latin American households it is necessary to count on policies and programmes that aim at solving gender inequalities, because these measures will benefit not only women but also their families and the Latin American society as a whole", stated Ernesto May, World Bank director for Economic Policy and for the Programme of Poverty Reduction in Latin America and the Caribbean.

The Report recommends that employment policies should concentrate in reducing the obstacles that women are facing, specifically poor women, to enter into working life. They should include increasing services such as childcare, the availability of family planning services and a fairer house chore sharing.

In terms of health, the documents points out that although maternal mortality has decreased in most of the countries, it is still the main health problem, particularly in Bolivia, Peru, Equator, El Salvador and Dominican Republic. AIDS has turned out to be one of the biggest problems in the Caribbean where men and women have a similar level of infection.

In education, the gap between men and women has been reduced in all the Latin American countries, and in some countries like Brazil, Costa Rica, Venezuela, Argentina, Jamaica, Nicaragua and Colombia the level of education achieved by women is superior to that achieved by men, because girls enrolled more than boys in school and boys drop out more to help to support their families. However, during economic crises, parents take girls out of school first.

The study underlines that domestic violence is "a challenge still pending in the countries of the region", being Haiti the country that presents the highest rate (70% of the female population affected by domestic violence). According to the document, "the risk of physical abuse decreases with the increase of household income and of the educational level of women and increases in married women, and, in some countries, among those women with an independent source of income."

The document states that even though there are gender problems that are common to almost all the countries, such as maternal mortality, the region presents big contrasts in terms of indicators of women situation and development.

Mexico, Chile, Uruguay and Venezuela present as their main problem the access of women to the labour market; while Colombia presents domestic violence as the biggest problem. On the other hand, Guyana, Guayana and Surinam show maternal mortality as the most serious problem. Argentina faces the labour market problems as well as adolescent pregnancy; Brazil labour market and maternal mortality; Central America, Equator, Peru and Paraguay, maternal mortality and domestic violence; Bolivia maternal mortality and adolescent pregnancy; and the Caribbean AIDS and domestic violence.

Further information: http://www.worldbank.org/gender

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