Women’s Day: Women will have to work one more day a week to equal men’s pay

women according to the latest data from the National Institute of Statistics and Informatics (INEI), in Peru they make up more than 40% of the employed population, which employs about 7 million 760 thousand people.

However, out of this total, only about 4 out of 10 women they have formal jobs, that is, they have labor protection. Given that the pandemic has affected many families, where in some cases women are the head of the family, in what conditions do most Peruvians work?

Forge Foundation Director Maria José Gomez notes that most Peruvians work informally.

“Most women are employed in informal and more dangerous jobs, as well as part-time jobs (…) kiosks who have a higher category and income space, since there are more men because they have more time to devote to their professional development, the conditions include not only the issue of wages for the type of positions, but also the type of positions in which they work women also jobs with lower incomes,” he said.

Why do men earn more than women?

Three years after the pandemic, it cannot be said that the employment of Peruvian women has recovered. According to INEI, there are now more unemployed women than there were before the pandemic, and the average wage is 1,250 soles, lower than reported before the crisis.

Although the study indicates that educationally there are currently women they are more educated than men, this is not reflected in their income in Peru, which is slowly growing.

INEI shows that at the national level, women’s income is 69.6% of men’s, meaning that overall, men earn almost 30% more than women.

And the numbers are also unequal when it comes to men and women. women with similar positions, with the same level of education and experience, according to a study by Apoyo Consultoría.

Apoyo Consultoría’s head of economic policy, Camila Ghezzi, notes that while the wage gap narrowed between 2010 and 2015, it has since stalled, hovering between 15% and 17%, and will take many years to close.

“What we have done is compare men and women with similar characteristics (…) In 2021, the gap reached 17%, i.e. women earned 17% less than men just for being women, which is equivalent to women having to work one more day a week to meet monthly salary. men,” he told RPP.

Ghezzi argues that this would imply that the gap they calculate is gender-based, meaning it responds to the prejudice that they are women.

“This is why it is critical and urgent to pursue gender equality policies in the public sector and in companies in order to attract and retain female talent, especially in the formal sector and in male-dominated sectors, because this is what the data has shown, we will reduce this gap,” he added.

But not all women register even the minimum wage of sols 1,025 because, if you go back to the INEI results, three out of 10 Peruvian women do not have their own income.

“There’s a lot women that they do not have economic autonomy, that they are economically inactive, that is, their economy depends on the income of their husband, ”the representative of the Forge Foundation added.

In regions such as Apurimac, Amazonas, Pasco and Cajamarca, the situation is even more serious. Pacífico Business School professor Natalia Manso warns that this prevents women from fully enjoying their rights.

“The lack of economic opportunities especially affects women and therefore the exercise of their rights and the protection of themselves in order to get out of situations of domestic violence. By regions, almost 38% in the mountains and 40% in the jungle are economically dependent on third parties, this does not mean that they do not work, but that their activities are not paid,” he explained.

The INEI report also points out that one of the reasons women earn less than men is that many of them have to work fewer hours because they are also responsible for family matters and caring for children.

Even the majority of working women create their own jobs, so they are less likely to negotiate their salary.

In conclusion, by no means thinking that after the pandemic women they would have had a good job and a decent salary, this did not happen. All indications are that the 10-year decline in female labor force participation in Latin America, as Sepal pointed out, will take time to recover.