El Salvador

Education differentials

The female literacy rate in El Salvador is 74.2 percent, but only 36.7 percent of girls enroll in secondary school. The low enrollment and high drop-out rate are common problems among girls and boys. Less than 30 percent of girls enroll in natural sciences classes at the tertiary level in El Salvador, compared with 34 percent of girls in Brazil.

►  74.2 % of adult females are literate.
►  52% of of secondary school students are females.
►  36.7% of females are enrolled in secondary school.
►  37% of males are enrolled in secondary school.
â–º 51% of tertiary students are female.
â–º 28.7% of students in natural sciences* are female.
â–º 29 %of teaching staff at the tertiary level are female.

(*Natural Sciences include the fields of computer science, engineering, mathematics, architecture, town planning, transport, and communications.)
Source: UNESCO Statistical Yearbook 1999.

 

Internet usage

Women's access to ICTs is quite limited in El Salvador where just 1 percent of the country's total population has access to the Internet and 1 percent to hand-held devices. About 60 percent of the population live in rural areas, where there are inadequate infrastructure facilities. Most of the rural population are women who are responsible for the children and the elderly, and therefore are unable to move to the urban areas where men go for work.

Labor market participation by women

According to 1997 statistics, women account for 37 percent of the total work force in El Salvador. They are mostly employed in agriculture, industry, and service sectors. Maquiladoras, foreign-owned factories where low-paid workers assemble imported parts into products for export, have remained the biggest growth area in the country's economy. About 78 percent of the labor force in these factories are women.[1]

Women constitute 29 percent of El Salvador's administrative and managerial positions in the labor force, an increase from 13 percent in the 1980s. In comparison, 20 percent of administrative and managerial positions are held by women in Mexico.

Labor market participation by women in the ICT sector
No data were available on women's participation in the ICT sector.

Wage differentials
No data were available on wage differentials.

Government policy on ICT
Several international telecommunication firms, such as Telefonica, Millicom, and France Telecom, have entered the domestic market because El Salvador's telecommunications industry is "regulation free." El Salvador has one of the most competitive telecommunication structures in the world, and long distance and local phone calls are quite economical. This should encourage ICT access by marginalized groups including women, as access, cost, and infrastructure are the major barriers to ICTs in most developing countries.

Government policy on gender
The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) was validated with reservations in El Salvador in 1981. The El Salvadorian government passed a law to form a national body called Instituto Salvadoreno para el Desarrollo de la Mujer (the Salvadorian Institute for Women's Development-ISDM) after the Beijing conference in 1995. ISDM provides the framework for public policies for gender equality.

The National Secretariat for the Family, connected to the President's office, created the "women's system" in 1989, to include gender awareness in government institutions in the agriculture sector and to change discriminatory legislation. In 1993, the Ministry for Economic and Social Development, Planning, and Coordination also began a project to introduce gender awareness in development projects within the ministry.

Sociocultural factors
Along with the recent natural calamities, the country is suffering from an economic crisis. About 52 percent of the total population live below the poverty line, and the majority of them are women. Before the series of natural calamities in the past 3 years, the country's economic growth was satisfactory, but poverty, violence against women, and poor education remain the primary barriers for the majority of girls and women in El Salvador.

Conclusions
In the two previous decades a stable political and economic atmosphere and an active women's movement helped to change women's socioeconomic roles. In the 1980s, women's NGOs started a national movement, which accelerated after the Peace Agreements in 1992. This movement has influenced the shaping of government policies on gender issues by encouraging equal opportunities for women in education and jobs and by addressing violence against women. So far there are no specific policies to promote an increased presence of women at different job levels in the ICT sector (Hafkin and Taggart 2001). [2]

Back to top