OAS on domestic work

The registration of domestic workers with social security agencies remains a major challenge in most countries. For those interested, the OAS has this round table on Tuesday June 25.

Women in Latin America earn less than men, although they are more educated.

Regarding the last note, today we presente a study by the Inter-American Development Bank called "New Century, Old Disparities". The study analyzes the wage gap between men and women in Latin America and the main results are:

- Although women have more years of education than men , are still concentrated in lower paid occupations such as teaching, health care or the service sector.
- Men earn 17% more than women in Latin America, when comparing men and women of the same age and the educational level.
- The wage gap has been decreasing in recent years, but at a pace that remains slow.
- It is essential to change household roles and stereotypes to attaining gender equality in the labor market.

                                               Source: Extracted from the IDB article.

Complete note here. 

Men are more likely to drop out than women

Men and women students behave differently when they faced a critical decision: borrow more money or drop out?. According to a new paper in the journal Gender & Society authored by Rachel Dwyer, Laura McCloud and Randy Hodson, men are more likely than women to drop out of school rather than take on more loans. Women are more likely to finish their degrees, even if that means graduating with more debt. This may explain part of the trend seen in recent years: women are not only enrolling in college at higher rates than men, they are also more likely to graduate.

Why? Men without college degrees face better job prospects that equivalently educated women, at least in the short term. Thus, the consequences of dropping out are lower for men.

Complete note here.

New OECD publication on Gender Gap

The OECD has just released a new publication that studies the gender gap in labor markets. All the information of the publication can be found here

Labor market outcomes and gender gap in LAC

In this interesting study labor market outcomes between men and women are analyzed for countries of the region. For example, it has been found that while wage gap between men and women has decreased in the last years the convergence is slow and today an average wage gap of 17 per cent for the region remains.

2012 World Population Day: Universal Access to Reproductive Health Services

Today, July 11th, we celebrate the World Population Day. This year focuses in the theme of universal access to reproductive health services. Reproductive health problems remain the leading cause of ill health and death for women of childbearing age worldwide. See all the details here.

International Women's Day: Optimize the talents of both sexes for better lives all around

Men earn more than women, work less, and occupy more of the top jobs – but women live longer, are better educated and get to retire younger. The OECD has launched a gender initiative which seeks to maximize the talents of both sexes creating better policies for better lives. More information about the initiative here.

Gender equality: the child bonus

A challenge for pension systems is to achieve gender equity. It is common that in a couple, the man works while the woman stays at home to have children and care for them. Entitlement to a pension is usually related to work experience. A compensating mechanism is the bonus per child in Chile. This is an amount received by the woman through her individual retirement account and is used to increase the value of her pension; it can not be withdrawn as a lump sum, but can be used to improve the value of a pension after age 65

Differences between men and women - Part IV

Continuing with the analysis of the differences between men and women in Latin America, the following chart shows the relative labor force participation rate of men and women. The figures for all regions are very similar. Between 20 and 54 years old the percentage of men and women working is very similar. It is from 55 years old where the gap began noticeable and men show higher rates.

Relative labor force participation (men/women), by age group

Differences between men and women - Part III

Continuing with the same issue, the following figure shows the difference in wages of men and women. The results do not show anything new, in all countries the wages of men are higher than women, although this gap is growing up over the years.

Relative wage of men with respect to women

International Women´s Day

Today, 8 March, is being celebrated the International Women´s Day. This year the official theme is "Equal access to education, training and science and technology: Pathway to decent work for women". For more information access this United Nations link.

Children of members will access the IESS

From February 1, the children of members of the Social Security Institute, IESS, under 18 years old, can be cared for in medical centers of the institution. See complete note here.

Work and fertility of women

Possibly, the most important social event of the last fifty years is that women are working much more in the market, in some countries reachinig rates of participation similar to males, and that they are reaching educational levels above the men in Europe and the Americas. Nevertheless, until the nineties, women with children worked less in the market. This seems to be changing, and for the first time (¿in history?), we see that on average, in countries where women have more children there is also more female work in the market. This, in OECD countries Esto, en países de la OCDE.