GENDER IN THE LATIN AMERICAN AND CARIBBEAN REGION

Gender refers to socially learned behaviors and expectations that are associated with the male and female sexes. Beyond biological differences, gender roles explain the different cultural and social processes that males and females experience, including constraints, limitations, preferences and opportunities.

Gender roles permeate all aspects of development policy. Men's and women's demands, preferences and access to services differ greatly. As such, these gender roles need to be taken into account if poverty-reduction policies are to be effective in providing both men and women - particularly the poor - with the services they need.

Over the last few decades, women’s social and economic position in LCR has experienced unprecedented change—narrowing, closing, and even reverting several gender gaps that have historically favored men, particularly regarding endowments. This progress places the LCR region at the forefront of the developing world in terms of bringing about a more leveled playing field for women and men. Most countries in LAC have practically achieved universal primary net enrollment for girls. The gender gap in school enrollment that historically favored boys has disappeared, and in fact now underachievement of boys is a challenge in the region. In secondary school, girls have even surpassed boys in education enrollment and completion. Fertility rates have declined steeply and families’ structures have changed markedly. At the same time, women’s labor force participation rates have increased and more women are entering traditionally male-dominated sectors.  The gender wage gap has also steadily declined. Women’s political participation has grown at all levels; more women have gained parliamentary positions, have become ministers, and have been elected as heads of state than in the previous decade.
However, after reaching significant progress on basic indicators of gender equality, countries in Latin America and the Caribbean are still grappling with certain issues of gender inequality in economic opportunities, human development assets and agency:

Endowments:

• Life expectancy is linked to gender roles as biological reasons only explain part of the longevity gap between women and men. The residual gap is related to male behavior – i.e. violence, alcoholism and risky behavior – which, in turn, is linked to male gender roles and socialization patterns.
• Educational attainment. Poor school retention and under-achievement among boys, particularly in the Caribbean has become a major gender challenge in the area of endowments. Secondary dropout rates range from 9 to 30 percent in selected countries, and boys have on average 1.1 percentage point more dropouts than girls. Males who drop-out of school can impose large social costs with high rates of idleness and criminality.  
• Maternal mortality remains the most important health-related problem that LAC women experience. In some countries, high maternal mortality is related to the lack of prenatal services; in others, the coexistence of high maternal mortality rates and widespread access to maternal health services suggest serious health care quality issues.
  

Economic opportunities:

• In the last four decades women in LCR have made the greatest increases in their labor force participation rate—more than women anywhere else in the world but important challenges remain to women’s economic empowerment.
• While there is some evidence that women have increasing integrated into areas traditionally dominated by men, this integration has not been uniform across countries or over time.
• Furthermore, gender earning gaps have not necessarily been closing, or at least not at the same rate as the other gender gaps. There is a persistent and significant unconditional gender earnings gap in most LCR countries: in an analysis of 18 countries, on average women earn 10% less than men. 
• Women remain over-represented in the self-employment sector and under-represented in the formal sector. 
• Traditional gender roles in LAC continue to assign domestic and family responsibilities disproportionately to women, putting constraints on their participation in formal jobs.

Agency:

• Violent crime is concentrated among young males, who are frequently both victims and perpetrators. Aggressive male behavior has been linked to socialization patterns that teach boys to be "tough", as well as to association with delinquent peers, and to lack of economic opportunity.
• However, women are more likely to become victims of gender-based violence so that widespread gender-based violence is one of the most critical issues threatening the agency of women and girls in LCR. Though notoriously under-reported, recent results from the Demographic and Health Surveys reveal striking levels of physical, sexual, and psychological violence against women in the region.
• Teenage pregnancy relates to girls’ ability to make informed choices and to transform those choices into desired actions. LAC has the highest rate of teenage pregnancy after sub-Saharan Africa. On average, more than 10 percent of 15-19 year-olds in LCR are mothers or pregnant, and the rates are even higher within the poorest countries. For example, in Guatemala, Nicaragua, Honduras and El Salvador, between 40% and 50% of young women have had a child before reaching 20 years old. This proportion increases to more than 60% and sometimes more than 70% among women in the lowest socio-economic groups.

Furthermore, gains have not been equal in every dimension. Even in areas where progress has been made, there is significant heterogeneity when looking at gains by rural versus urban residence, by income levels, and across ethnic groups. Within all countries of the region, indigenous people are among the poorest of the poor and overall they have experienced the least change in poverty conditions. Indigenous women are typically the most disadvantaged—facing constraints imposed by their ethnicity as well as by their sex. In Guatemala for example, the illiteracy rate among indigenous women stands at 60 percent, 20 points above indigenous males and twice the rate of non-indigenous females.