By Mario Osava
RIO DE JANEIRO, Apr 30 1997 (IPS)

Women have a higher educational level than men in the Latin American labour force, but that has not brought about a significant reduction in inequality and gender discrimination, states a recently released study.

That is one of the central conclusions to emerge from a long study on “the Evolution of Female Participation in the Latin American Labour Market” from 1970 to 1990, by Lais Abramo, a researcher at the Santiago-based Latin American and Caribbean Institute of Economic and Social Planning.

“Gender discrimination remains strong,” Abramo told IPS during the second Women and Mercosur (Southern Cone Common Market) Seminar, held Tuesday and Wednesday at the headquarters of the Latin American Parliament in Sao Paulo, Brazil.

“The wage gap between the genders broadens as the educational level of the employee rises,” she said.

On average in Latin America, a woman has to have 15 years of education to achieve the same salary as a man with 11 years of studies, she pointed out. But that four year difference climbs to seven years in countries where discrimination is strongest, such as Brazil.

The study also indicates that unemployment among women is higher, in spite of an increase over the past few decades in their participation in the labour force, the hours they dedicate to paid work, and the number of years they remain economically active. The study found, for example, that from 1970 to 1990, the period in which Latin American women remained in paying jobs rose by an average of five years.

Nevertheless, women’s work is often given less prestige than men’s, Abramo said. While a man is a tailor, a woman is simply a seamstress, and men are chefs while women are mere cooks, she stressed.

The business community sees women employees as representing greater costs, she added, due to the fact that it is still only women who are given maternity leave, and the stereotype that women miss work more often.

Women are also the hardest hit by the precariousness of jobs, an international phenomenon that has particularly affected Latin America. From 1990 to 1995, 85 percent of new jobs worldwide were created in domestic activities, self-employment and businesses with less than five employees, according to a report by the International Labour Organisation (ILO).

It is precisely those sectors where women’s participation has grown the most, Abramo pointed out.

Women’s inferior conditions in the workforce, in spite of their higher – and growing – educational level, was demonstrated in Brazil by the latest data compiled by the Sao Paulo-based Seade Foundation.

Economically active women with 11 or more years of education rose from 17 to 25 percent of the work force in the past 10 years, and 18 to 24 percent among men.

Female performance in Brazilian schools has also improved. In 1994, 27 percent failed – a high rate, but much lower than the 39 percent among males.

Nevertheless, last January, women workers in the metropolitan area of Sao Paulo were earning an average of 631 reals (601 dollars) a month, only 61.5 percent of the average salary among men. And the difference increased with educational level. Women university graduates earned an average of only 51.4 percent of what their male counterparts were paid.

Unemployment has always been higher among women. According to Seade Foundation figures, in the Brazilian capital, where the greatest difference was found, 19.2 percent of women were out of work in February, compared to 13.8 percent of men. In Sao Paulo the rates were 16.3 and 12.8 percent respectively.

The problem, said Felicia Madeira, the Seade Foundation’s director of analysis, is that women tend to be confined to “pink- collar jobs” seen as “an extension of their domestic duties.”

One argument used to justify lower wages for women is that such work is complementary, said Madeira. But she predicted that this will change in the long-run, because jobs in the overwhelmingly male industrial sector are becoming more scarce, while employment is growing in the service sector, where women’s higher level of education can eventually win out.

Biologist Maria Cristina Prata Neves, with the National Centre of Research in Agrobiology, is also optimistic that things will change, due to the growing importance of knowledge in economic activities.

The presence of women in post-graduate programmes has increased, she pointed out, although this is largely due to the greater difficulty faced by women in finding work after they graduate from the university.

Professional women will soon be a majority, even in male- dominated areas, which will begin to be reflected in the labour force, Prata Neves predicted.

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