Women in Paid Employment : A Role for Public Policies and Social Norms in Guatemala
With only 32 percent of working-age women in the labor market, Guatemala is an upper-middle-income country with one of the lowest rates of female labor force participation in the Latin America and the Caribbean region, and in the world. The rate of...
| Main Authors: | , |
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| Format: | Working Paper |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2022
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/324211643385063814/Women-in-Paid-Employment-A-Role-for-Public-Policies-and-Social-Norms-in-Guatemala http://hdl.handle.net/10986/36920 |
| Summary: | With only 32 percent of working-age
women in the labor market, Guatemala is an
upper-middle-income country with one of the lowest rates of
female labor force participation in the Latin America and
the Caribbean region, and in the world. The rate of female
labor force participation is especially low in the poor
regions of the North and the Northwest. This paper explores
information from different micro data sets, including the
most recent Population Census (2002 and 2018) to assess the
drivers of the recent progress. Between 2002 and 2018, the
female labor force participation rate increased 5.7
percentage points, from an average of 26 to 32 percent
nationwide. This increase was partly explained by the
drastic increases in the educational attainment of women,
the reduction in fertility, and the country’s structural
transformation toward services. However, a large component
remains unexplained. Exploring 2018 data, the paper shows
that social norms, attitudes toward women in society, and
public policies are important determinants of these changes.
The analysis suggests that, taken together, these factors
can all become an important source of increased female labor
force participation moving forward. |
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