Executive summary
Educational attainments have progressed at all levels for women, encouraged by higher returns to education and the prospect of greater labour market inclusion. Today young women out-perform young men in terms of educational attainments: among 25-34 year-olds, the share of tertiary graduates is 35% for women and 27% for men.
In Colombia, 48% of all women of working age (15-64 years old) were employed in 2021, compared to close to 74% of men. The resulting gender employment gap of 26 percentage points exceeds the OECD average by 12 percentage points. The national figures mask the presence of considerable variations. In some rural areas, the gender gap in labour force participation is more than twice the level of the urban centres. In Caldas, Caquetá, and Huila, for example, the gap measures 29%, which compares to 13% in Bogota. At primary and secondary levels of education, the gap in participation rates between men and women reaches 33 and 20 percentage points, respectively, compared to 7 percentage points at high level of education. These differences reflect the fact that at lower levels of education women are more likely to be employed in the informal labour market. Moreover, when they work for pay, female workers are more likely to earn a low income and less likely to advance to management positions. Furthermore, girls are much less likely to study in the more lucrative science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. The share of male graduates in STEM subjects exceeds the corresponding share of female graduates by almost 20 percentage points.
Women are less likely to work for pay, and to do so full-time. Instead, they typically spend more hours looking after children, elderly relatives, and relatives with disabilities, and doing housework. On average women in Colombia spend 22 more hours per week on unpaid tasks than men do, well above the OECD average (15 hours). At the same time, Colombian men devote 23 more hours to paid work activities per week than women do, again higher than the OECD average (12 hours).
The likelihood that a young Colombian becomes a NEET – the acronym for Not in Employment, Education, or Training – is unusually high by international standards. NEET rates of 17% and 37% for young men and women, respectively, imply that the latter are 2.2 times more likely to be NEETs than the former, close to 70% higher than the OECD-wide average (1.3 times) and higher than in Chile, Costa Rica and Peru, the other countries in this review series. Young women with a low level of education are particularly exposed to the risk of becoming NEET since they typically dedicate a disproportionate amount of their time to unpaid domestic activities.
Gender wage and employment gaps exist across all levels of education but tend to be widest among men and women with low levels of education. Likewise, gender inequalities in the time devoted to unpaid work tend to be widest in rural areas than urban areas since the conditions of access to basic infrastructure, education and childcare services are comparatively poorer in these areas, while the influence of patriarchal and traditional social norms is stronger. Concurring factors that strengthen gender inequalities relate to being native of indigenous populations or being single parents. Colombia’s decades-long internal conflict and violence has exacerbated group disparities even further, by displacing a significant part of the population. Women and men were about equally likely to be victims of internal conflict and violence, as well as forced displacement. Since the sudden starting of massive immigration flows from neighbouring Venezuela, domestic and international migratory pressures have tended to overlap.
More than half of the total Colombian population of working age are women. Going forward, rapid population ageing, and a shrinking labour force mean that mobilising this significant talent pool should represent a priority for any Colombian policy strategy to create a more sustainable and inclusive economy and society. Provided that it is carefully designed and implemented, international evidence suggests that achieving a better sharing of paid and unpaid work between men and women requires a comprehensive policy strategy. This involves notably: family policies, including the availability of quality services and facilities for early childcare and elderly care, that help reducing the barriers that stand in the way of a more equitable division of time and responsibilities between partners; tackle gender attitudes and stereotypes at school; and scale up efforts to attract the interest of girls in STEM disciplines. Moreover, fostering the policies that help reduce the gender gap in labour income and free more time that women can dedicate to paid work could lead to significant positive effects on employment and productivity while strengthening the work-life balance. These beneficial effects are more likely to occur if they are combined with continued efforts to rewards poor families for their engagement in their children education and to communicate the benefits of completing studies.