We study the effects of integrated social services on the utilization and subjective life satisfaction of women in El Salvador.The Ciudad Mujer "one-stop shop" centers integrate health, legal, employment and other services into a single secure environment for women.These integrated services could boost demand by reducing the cost of access, improving quality and exploiting complementarities in service provision.Using a randomized encouragement design, 4,062 women in the vicinity of three centers were randomly encouraged to visit Ciudad Mujer (treatment group) or a local health clinic (placebo group), or they received no encouragement (control group).Approximately 1 year later, women who were exposed to Ciudad Mujer through encouragement visited the center an additional 2.1 times, increased the use of public services by 0.47s.d. and reported an improvement of 10% in life satisfaction relative to both the placebo and control groups.

Deeply entrenched cultural norms in the LAC society tend to dictate that women should bear the primary responsibility for domestic tasks and caregiving. This social perception results in an unequal distribution of chores, not only within households but also in the broader work environment. This policy brief offers a thorough review of robust academic studies on men's involvement in caregiving and examines specific cases where further research is warranted. It particularly focuses on assessing the effectiveness of various public policies that encourage men's engagement in caregiving at home and in their professional lives, emphasizing the pressing need for a critical approach to this issue through rigorous evaluations and detailed research.

The IDB Groups Gender and Diversity Knowledge Initiative (GDLab), promotes, leads, and finances high-impact research to achieve a more inclusive and equitable society in Latin American and Caribbean countries. Download this brochure to learn more about this initiative.

We conducted a discrete choice experiment to elicit women's revealed preferences regarding job schedule flexibility (flexible scheduling and part-time employment) in a developing country context. We did so with an incentivized methodology for job seekers. On average, women have a high willingness to pay for a flexible schedule within a full-time contract but a much lower desire to trade wages for part-time contracts. The willingness to pay for a flexible work arrangement is largest for more affluent women, while willingness to pay for part-time employment is highest among those with higher time demands.

Violence against women is widespread in Latin America and the Caribbean. On average, every day, 10 women are murdered in the region, and of the 25 countries with the highest rates of femicide in the world, 13 are in this region. Violence against women invades womens everyday lives and takes place in both public and private spheres and within all socioeconomic groups. Most femicides are committed by their partners or former partnersone out of every three women between the ages of 15 and 49 in the region have experienced physical and/or sexual violence at the hands of a partner, with rates ranging between 17% (for the Dominican Republic) and 53% (for Bolivia). Violence against women has a negative impact (physical and psychological) on the health of victims, and it also affects their economic decisions and opportunities for development. Additionally, it increases the probability that children suffer abuse, corporal punishment, and/or negligent/dysfunctional care as well as the likelihood that minors end up reproducing this behavior when they are adults, perpetuating the cycle of violence.

The labor force participation of women in Latin America and the Caribbean is low, and the regions gender gap is one of the widest in the world. Although important progress has been made over the last 50 years (with womens participation rate going from around 20% in the 1960s to more than 60% toward the beginning of the 2010s), the pace of growth slowed down in the early 2000s. Once they enter the labor market, women tend to be employed in lower-paying and lower-quality jobs compared to men. This is due to occupational and educational segregation. On top of this unfavorable situation for women, they are in disadvantage in terms of the 21st century skills (those that are highly valued today and that are expected to continue to have a growing demand) and they face “glass ceilings” which limit womens access to hierarchical positions, hindering their professional progression.

We study gender differences in changes in labor market dynamics before the pandemic and during the COVID-19 pandemic in four Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) countries: Brazil, Chile, Dominican Republic, and Mexico. Specifically, we look at differences in labor market states and at differences in the transitions of workers across labor market states. To identify the pandemic's impact, we compare labor market stocks and labor market flows for a number of balanced panels of workers during the pandemic and before the pandemic. We find that the pandemic has negatively affected employment and labor market participation of both men and women, but that the effect is significantly stronger for women, magnifying the already large gender gaps observed in LAC countries. The main channel generating this stronger impact is the increase in child care work performed by women with school-age children.

In recent years, significant progress has been made toward implementing policies and programs to support gender equity in Latin America and the Caribbean. However, large disparities continue to exist between men and women in educational and health outcomes. In the region, girls perform better than boys in soft skills and language at an early age and the school attendance gaps favor women at all levels. However, once in school, male students tend to perform better in mathematics in standardized tests compared to their female peers at age 15, with important implications for womens decisions on their future educational and career paths. At the same time, a large proportion of women in the region still lack access to reproductive technology. The maternal mortality rate remains high and tends to correlate with both low income levels and lack of prenatal care. Also, the rate of teen motherhood (1519 years old) is very high.

By March 2020, COVID-19 was confirmed present in all Latin American and Caribbean countries. Not only did the pandemic weakened the regions economy, it exacerbated structural inequalities. Women, indigenous peoples, African descendants, persons with disabilities and the LGBTQ community were disproportionately affected by the pandemic, reflecting both the vulnerability of these groups and the fragility of the progress made in recent years toward improving their social welfare. This document highlights the main lessons learned from IADB studies on the impact of the pandemic on these populations.

When closing diversity gaps, one of the major challenges in Latin America and the Caribbean is the limited amount of data reflecting this topic. The few statistics that are available on vulnerable groups such as indigenous peoples and African descendants, LGBTQ persons, and people with disabilities reflect economic and social gaps in several areas. Policies designed to promote the inclusion of these groups requires identifying them and knowing what socioeconomic gaps they are facing and the causes of these inequalities. However, there are several difficulties in accessing this type of information.

Current carbon emission trends threaten inevitable and irreversible changes to the environment that could cost the region US$100 billion annually by 2050 and the loss of up to 2.5 million jobs by 2030. Climate change affects us all. However, women, indigenous peoples, African descendants, and persons with disabilities are particularly vulnerable to the environmental, economic, and social disruptions caused by climate change. At the same time, these groups are decisive agents of change for the mitigation of climate change and the transition to a green and sustainable economy. This document presents evidence of the challenges faced by these populations, as well as the main opportunities and lessons learned about their role in the transition to a zero net carbon future in the region.

Unlike in other policy areas, responsibility for gender policy is distributed throughout the entire structure of the State. However, in order to coordinate and make public action on the gender equality agenda more effective, several countries in the region have created ministerial structures to promote and implement cross-cutting gender policies. This document discusses the importance of this institutionalization process, the role of the Ministries of Women and how they can be strengthened to achieve more and better outcomes in the region.

The indigenous peoples and African descendants in Latin America and the Caribbean are far behind the rest of the population in terms of access to education, health services, and financial services, something that is reflected in poor labor outcomes and high poverty rates. Indigenous peoples and African descendants achieve lower levels of education in their lifetime. In recent decades, the region has narrowed the years-of-education gap between the indigenous peoples and the non-indigenous population, but the differences are still large. The gaps in access to health services are clear in the maternal and infant mortality rates, which are higher for the indigenous peoples compared to the non-indigenous population, as well as in the deteriorated health indicators for children under the age of five. The labor situation is no better, with the indigenous peoples holding jobs in low-skilled occupations to a larger extent than the non-indigenous population. The poverty rates are alarming. In total, 43% of the regions indigenous persons and 25% of the African descendants are poor, and with very few exceptions, the poverty rates among African descendants and indigenous peoples are more than twice the rate of the white population.

We study the labor supply impact of the COVID-19 pandemic by gender in four Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) countries: Brazil, Chile, Dominican Republic, and Mexico. To identify the impact, we compare labor market stocks and labor market flows over four quarters for a set of balanced panel samples of comparable workers before and after the pandemic. We find that the pandemic has negatively affected the labor market status of both men and women, but that the effect is significantly stronger for women, magnifying the already large gender gaps that characterize LAC countries. The main channel through which this stronger impact is taking place is the increase in child care work affecting women with school-age children.

New technological trends, such as digitization, artificial intelligence and robotics, have the power to drastically increase economic output but may also displace workers. In this paper we assess the risk of automation for female and male workers in four Latin American countries Bolivia, Chile, Colombia and El Salvador. Our study is the first to apply a task-based approach with a gender perspective in this region. Our main findings indicate that men are more likely than women to perform tasks linked to the skills of the future, such as STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics), information and communications technology, management and communication, and creative problem-solving tasks. Women thus have a higher average risk of automation, and 21% of women vs. 19% of men are at high risk (probability of automation greater than 70%). The differential impacts of the new technological trends for women and men must be assessed in order to guide the policy-making process to prepare workers for the future. Action should be taken to prevent digital transformation from worsening existing gender inequalities in the labor market.

A diferencia de otras áreas de política, la responsabilidad de la política de género está distribuida a lo largo y ancho de toda la estructura del Estado. No obstante, para coordinar y efectivizar el accionar público entorno a la agenda de igualdad de género, varios países de la región han creado estructuras ministeriales que tienen como objetivo la promoción y puesta en marcha de políticas transversales de género. En este documento se discute sobre la importancia de este proceso de institucionalización, el rol de los Ministerios de la Mujer y cómo este puede verse fortalecido para alcanzar más y mejores resultados en la región.

La presencia del COVID-19 se confirmó en todos los países de América Latina y el Caribe en marzo de 2020. La pandemia no solo debilitó el aparato económico de la región, sino que también exacerbó las desigualdades estructurales. Las mujeres, los afrodescendientes, los pueblos indígenas, las personas con discapacidad y las personas LGBTQ se vieron afectados de manera desproporcionada por la pandemia, reflejando tanto la vulnerabilidad de estos grupos como la fragilidad de los avances logrados en los últimos años en la mejora de su bienestar social. Este documento destaca los principales aprendizajes de los estudios del BID sobre el impacto de la pandemia en estas poblaciones.

La crisis económica y sanitaria asociada con el COVID-19 ha afectado con mayor fuerza la participación laboral femenina, exacerbando las brechas de género existentes y revirtiendo el progreso logrado en las últimas décadas. El desafío hoy es doble: pasar de medidas de mitigación, precipitadas y sin perspectiva de género, hacia iniciativas consistentes y de largo plazo que propicien igualdad de oportunidades y mejores condiciones laborales. Este documento repasa el perfil de medidas de mitigación que tuvo lugar en la región y ofrece un panorama de las soluciones de política de mediano y largo plazo necesarias para abordar las brechas estructurales de género en el mercado laboral.

We develop and estimate a search model that captures the specific characteristics of Latin America and Caribbean (LAC) labor markets and the crucial differences between men and women. Labor force participation decisions are integrated in the labor market dynamics, taking into account sample selection over unobservables. The model is estimated on four LAC countries (Argentina, Chile, Colombia and Mexico) and on three education levels (Primary, Secondary and Tertiary). We use the estimated model to study changes in gender gaps and in output implied by policies that increase the labor force participation of women. We focus on four policies: an increase in the provision of child care, an increase in average female productivity, a gender-based contribution rate for formal employees, and changes in formality and informality costs. We find that the impact on the extensive margin of the female labor supply is the main channel responsible for the policy-induced increase in output.