2. A holistic policy framework for achieving a balanced sharing of paid and unpaid work

Abstract

This chapter argues that achieving a better sharing of paid and unpaid work between men and women in Colombia requires a comprehensive policy strategy and presents a holistic framework for its development using two policy axes. The first axis focuses on the policies aimed at reducing the barriers that stand in the way of a more equitable division of time and responsibilities between partners: creating a more effective care system, expanding parental leave and reducing the transmission of gender stereotypes through the education system. The second includes the policies that aim to improve the participation of women in the labour market by ensuring girls’ access and enrolment in the education system, promoting women in non-traditional careers and leadership positions, supporting female entrepreneurship, and fighting gender-based violence. This chapter reviews each area in detail and provides policy insights for possible improvements.

As discussed in Chapter 1, a combination of societal, institutional and economic factors stands behind the higher unpaid work burden of women, which weakens their economic outcomes. Policy changes and a gradual shift in attitudes have practically eliminated gender gaps in basic education and reduced those in the labour market.

Nonetheless, women in Colombia continue to be less frequently employed; to work more frequently in the informal sector; to steer away from better-paid STEM careers; and to earn lower wages than men. With the welfare and income gains of reducing these gaps being potentially substantial for both men and women, a more equitable division of paid and unpaid work represents a high priority policy concern.

Given the interplay between different drivers, a holistic policy framework is needed to achieve a more balanced sharing of paid and unpaid work in Colombia. For practical descriptive reasons, it is useful to structure such a broad approach using two policy axes:

On the one hand, the policies aimed at reducing the barriers that currently stand in the way of achieving a more equitable division of time and responsibilities between men and women, and
On the other hand, the policies that aim at fostering the participation of women in the labour market through ensuring that women’s paid work pays more.

The first axis consists of the policies to reduce the overall amount of unpaid work that families have to carry out, as well as to tackle the hurdles that make it difficult for couples to share paid and unpaid work more equally. Key examples of specific areas within this axis are the policies aimed at the expansion of the public care system for both children and the elderly; introducing or strengthening the regulations governing parental leave and flexible work regulations; and the promotion of gender-neutral approaches at all levels of education.

The second policy axis spotlights the policies that help reduce the gender gap in labour income and lessen the incentive for women to spend long hours on unpaid work and free more hours that they can then dedicate to paid work. These policies include addressing the barriers for all groups of girls to access quality education; promoting women’s careers, including in leadership positions; strengthening gender equality in business entrepreneurship; and fighting violence against women in public spaces and the workplace.

Figure 2.1 provides the diagrammatic illustration of the policy framework and its components. The two policy axes are mutually reinforcing: the interplay of positive policy changes across each of them has the potential to significantly increase the number of women who could and would like to work outside the home, as well as the number of men willing to take over caring and domestic tasks.

While not the only policies that contribute to these changes, the specific areas addressed in this chapter emerged during a virtual fact-finding mission with Colombian authorities as the most relevant, in terms of both potential impact and feasibility. The remainder of the chapter reviews each area in detail, starting with an assessment of the challenges and existing policies. A discussion of policy insights completes the analysis of each area, building on the lesson from international experience and the OECD’s knowledge of international practices. While there is a general need to ensure that policies and programmes benefit all women, many of the policy recommendations addressed focus on the needs of some population groups more particularly, including indigenous women and women living in remote areas. The key policy insights of each policy area are summarised in Box 2.2 and Box 2.3.

Figure 2.1. A comprehensive policy framework for achieving a balanced sharing of paid and unpaid work in Colombia

Reducing barriers to sharing paid and unpaid work equitably

Creating a more comprehensive care system

Experience from the OECD countries shows that the availability of quality and affordable early childhood education and care (ECEC) provisions is essential for children’s well-being, learning and development. In addition to supporting a strong start in life and learning, access to comprehensive ECEC, in combination with other family provisions, can expand opportunities for women to participate in labour markets by devoting time to income generating activities (OECD, 2017[1]; OECD, 2018[2]). In Colombia, on average women spend 22 hours per week more than men on unpaid work, time essentially dedicated to care activities and household chores (Chapter 1). This wide gender gap explains the Colombian Government’s present commitment to develop comprehensive care for all children, particularly the poorest and most vulnerable. These are the groups that stand to gain the most from the dual dividends of early childcare, in terms of children’s well-being and the economic empowerment of mothers.

Since the launch of the Programa Hogar Comunitario de Bienestar (Community Welfare Home Program), in 1986, the bulk of public ECEC services in Colombia has been secured through the system of community homes, (OECD, 2016[3]). The system has further expanded overtime, following implementation of the guidelines of Law 1804 of 2016 on State Policy for the Comprehensive Development of Early Childhood. As a result, 67% of ECEC services to up to 6 years of age are comprehensive today, with services 5 days a week. The service also includes meals and reinforced controls of nutritional quality. Low-income families from poor localities have always been a priority target of the Instituto Colombiano de Bienestar Familiar (ICBF, Colombian Institute for Family Welfare), the agency responsible for the provision of comprehensive ECEC, in co-operation with other public entities, leads.

According to the OECD review of education policies in Colombia, the country’s ECEC system has progressed over the years (OECD, 2016[3]). In the process, service provision has become more formalised, with the focus of attention including the professionalisation of the caring staff, through widespread training. Efforts to reach out to disadvantaged children have gradually fostered. As one example of good practice, in Medellín the expansion of public childcare centres has included the Buen Comienzo (Good Start) programme, which offers comprehensive early childhood development services, eight hours per day, five days per week for infants up to five years of age.

The government’s long-term goal is to make comprehensive ECEC accessible for all children. However, the further expansion of the system and its steering towards higher standards of performance remains challenging. As one benchmark, the enrolment rate of children in the three to five years age group (78%) is still 5 percentage points lower than the OECD average (OECD, 2021[4]). Furthermore, although the transition year before starting primary school is compulsory, enrolment of five-year-olds is far from universal. One additional concern relates to the enrolment of children under the age of three, which has declined recently from 32% in 2015 to 26% in 2019. The factors explaining low enrolment rates in Colombia include weak provision and lack of awareness of the importance of comprehensive ECEC for children’s social and cognitive development (OECD, 2016[3]).

On outcomes, there is encouraging evidence that the positive returns of comprehensive ECEC provision in Colombia extend beyond the well-being of children to include the labour market inclusion of mothers. In theory, the expansion of quality and affordable ECEC provision can either stimulate the labour participation and job search of vulnerable mothers or, alternatively, lead them to simply replace childcare with other unpaid domestic tasks, with hardly any effects on labour market inclusion. In the case of Colombia, earlier investigations have found strong support of the first hypothesis. For example, estimates of the positive effects of Programa Hogar Comunitario de Bienestar on mothers’ employment rates and hours worked show an increase of 30%in the average probability of employment (Attanasio and Vera-Hernández, 2004[5]). Assessment of progress towards ECEC provision by the city of Medellín, including through Buen Comienzo, finds that in areas where access to quality and affordable childcare centres is precluded, only three out of ten women participate in the labour market (Cardona-Sosa and Morales, 2015[6]). In contrast, twice as many women participate in areas where there is a centre 500 metres away or less. Beyond proximity to comprehensive ECEC providers, the quality of neighbouring conditions also matters. Women who live in neighbourhoods where economic activity is stronger are more likely to search for an occupation (Leonardo and Cardona-Sosa, 2015[7]). At the same time, the likelihood of job searching increases with the availability of public transport.

Turning to financial incentives to encourage access to public comprehensive ECEC services, the conditional cash transfer programme. Familias en Acción (Families in Action) aims to reduce poverty and inequalities in Colombia by providing payments on the condition that families access health and education services, such as vaccination, medical check-ups, and primary and secondary education. During its existence, the government introduced measures to extend the programme’s conditionality to include pre-primary education, particularly with the objective to achieve universal coverage in the transition year. In addition to Familias en Acción, the strategy Unidos (United Network, previously Juntos) targets the most disadvantaged families (including displaced families) through health interventions and support for the development of children under the age of ten.

Following the adoption of the ambitious National Development Plan (NDP) 2022-26, Colombia Potencia Mundial de la Vida (Colombia World Power of Life), the intention is to merge these programmes into the new Citizen Income Program for the delivery of conditional and not conditional monetary transfers to households in situations of poverty, extreme poverty and socio-economic vulnerability, prioritizing persons with disabilities. (art. 66 of Law 2294 of 2023).

Although in Colombia, as elsewhere in the Latin American region, the main objective of social welfare programmes is to tackle immediate poverty needs, by providing insurance and supporting families through periods of low income (Orazio Attanasio et al., 2021[8]), potentially lasting effects are also important to investigate. Assessment of Familias en Acción shows that the programme has contributed to improve child nutrition through growth and development check-ups, as well as increasing access to preventive health services (Lopez-Arana et al., 2016[9]). In addition, recent investigation finds that Familias en Acción has had major impacts on other crucial drivers to higher standards of living. Although not intentionally targeted by the programme, these manifest in the evidence of a reduction of arrests for criminal behaviour and teen pregnancies, as well as the increase of educational attainment (Orazio Attanasio et al., 2021[8]).

However, unlike initial expectation that Familias en Acción would also strengthen women’s economic empowerment, by substituting the time dedicated to unpaid work with more time for paid work activities, the transfer does not seem to significantly change the employment decisions of mothers. This outcome reflects the fact that the programme does not strengthen in any fundamental way the capacity of women to influence decision-making with partners as to how to comply with the conditionality obligations of the programme. One possible reason behind this lies in the choice to avoid exacerbating domestic conflicts on the control of resources, including the risk of violence (Fernández Villagómez, 2022[10]). Yet, experience so far with Familias en Acción appears to suggest that one option for further improving the programme could be by extending the conditions of access to the benefit – the burden of taking the children to the doctor, or to health centres for their periodical checks – to the men as well, rather than continuing to fall on the woman alone (Lopez-Arana et al., 2016[9]).

A study focussed on the effects of the obligations attached to Familias en Acción, (Marcillo et al., 2021[11]) finds that although the transfer decreases the time that women spend caring for household members, it does not necessarily reduce the extent of their unpaid family responsibilities. Given the prevalence of traditional gender roles, the likelihood that the education transfer ends up increasing the time that women spend in other domestic work activities – such as food preparation, cleaning, and house maintenance – remains high. This substitution effect points to the important complementary role played by the policies to change attitudes and discrimination.

As discussed in Chapter 1, Colombia’s population is in an advanced stage of demographic transition, reflecting the combination of declining fertility and increasing life expectancy. According to the World Population Prospects of the UN, the older population aged 65 or over is growing considerably faster than all younger age groups. A survey by the Ministerio de Salud y Protección Social (Ministry of Health and Social Protection) shows that 40.7% of people aged 60 and over have difficulties in performing at least one “daily living activity” – i.e. an activity to manage a basic need, such as personal hygiene, dressing, toileting, and eating. This proportion increases with age, from 26.7% for those aged 60-69, to 81.1% among those that are 80 or older (SABE, 2015[12]). Rapid population ageing strengthens the demand for long-term care services as individuals’ physical and mental health deteriorates and people lose the ability to perform certain basic daily activities (IDB, 2019[13]).

With five Colombian elderly people living in poverty and more than 40% lacking any stable income from the State or private pension fund, corresponding to about 2 million people (DNP, 2016[14]), population ageing also fuels the functional dependence of the elderly on the support of other individuals, who typically provide their services on an informal basis. As a result, many older adults in Colombia receive support from their children, other people they live with, and family and friends who do not live with them. Women represent the majority of caregivers (83.9%) with many of these women also carrying out other unpaid domestic tasks, which precludes the access to a paid work activity. The average age of women caregivers is 49 (SABE, 2015[12]) – most often helping with basic activities of daily life, such as administering medicines, shopping and going to medical appointments.

Relying on families as the main guarantors of the care of the elderly not only puts the elderly person on an unequal footing when facing difficulties, but also puts them at risk. In extreme cases, the resulting overload can contribute to cases of repeated violence against them, including from relatives. The 1850 Law, published in 2017, established penal sanctions for domestic violence and abandonment, reiterating the family’s main responsibility for the care of the elderly. The law also established special protection centres that must be paid for by the person who committed the acts of domestic violence (Ramírez-Bustamante and Garzón-Landinez, 2021[15]).

Despite having specific legislation and public programmes focused on the elderly, formal long-term care programmes and policies to address functional dependency remain scarce in Colombia. In addition, there is limited information regarding the actual supply of these services. Since 2008, the Ministry of Health and Social Protection (MHSP) has the obligation to keep a national record of long-term care providers. However, this record has not been created so far (IDB, 2019[13]).

Box 2.1. . National Care System and Bogota’s District Care System

National Care System

With the enactment of Law 2281 of 2023, Colombia joins other Latin American countries in the effort to create a more comprehensive care systems. The Colombian National Care System is an inter-agency co-ordination mechanism for “existing and new services, regulations, policies and technical and institutional actions, with the aim of responding to the demands of care by households in a co-responsible manner between the nation, the private sector, civil society, communities, and between women and men in their differences and diversity in order to promote a new social organisation of care in the country” (art. 6 of Law 2281). The government body in charge of the National Care System is the new Ministry of Equality and Equity, which seeks to “contribute to the elimination of economic, political and social inequalities; to promote the enjoyment of the right to equality; to promote compliance with the principles of non-discrimination and non-regression; the defence of all subjects under special constitutional protection, vulnerable populations and groups that have historically been discriminated against or marginalised, incorporating and adopting rights, gender, differential, ethnic-racial and intersectional approaches” (art. 3 of Law 2281).

Bogota’s Districts Care System (SIDICU)

Bogotá is the first city in Latin America to implement a care facility designed to recognise and reduce the care burden assumed by women. Led by the Secretariat for Women, the Sistema Distrital de Cuidado, articulates various care services in Bogota (Alcaldia Mayor de Bogota, 2021[16]). The programme aims to meet the needs for both the caregiver and the cared for, which can be children under five, people with disabilities, and the elderly. It articulates existing programmes and services to meet the demands of care at all levels of government, while involving the private sector, local communities and households. Its objectives are: (1) to recognise the care work of the people who carry it out; (2) redistribute care work between men and women, and (3) reduce unpaid care work for caregivers. The system is divided into two blocks of care centres and mobile units:

Manzanas de Cuidado (Blocks of Care) are areas that concentrate care services with a proximity and simultaneously criteria, which allows people to access them without having to walk more than 20 minutes. Its objective is to package services close to the homes of the people they care for and those who require care and provide them simultaneously: while the caregiver accesses training or respite, those who require care are in a space of well-being and capacity development. Its objective is that women can relieve themselves of the care tasks that are traditionally assigned to be carried out by them. Some services include laundry, care centres for children, the elderly, and people with disabilities, canteens, and leisure spaces, amongst others. Since 2020, the district of Bogota has opened seven Apples of Care centres.
Unidades Móviles de Cuidado (Mobile Units of Care) are the itinerant strategy of the District System of Care. These are fully equipped vehicles, which provide care services in rural and remote areas where there are no Manzanas de Cuidado. They can also provide home care services if needed. In 2020, a pilot project involving two mobile units was launched before broader scale implementation.
Both modalities include flexible training (weekends, nights and hybrid) where the madres cuidadoras can culminate their schooling and benefit from other educational training.

Policy insights

Foster ongoing efforts to make comprehensive ECEC programmes accessible to all children. For children, access to affordable and reliable ECEC programmes means improved learning opportunities, alongside stronger opportunities to strengthen well-being and standards of living. Mothers will benefit from the positive externalities of entrusting a secure environment for their children to actively seek a job in the labour market and spend more time in a paid work activity. To achieve the dual dividends of an inclusive and effective ECEC system, Colombia will need to further address inequalities in participation, particularly the exclusion of most disadvantaged children who stand to reap the greatest benefits. The community homes approach has proven to be an effective means to reach households in rural and remote areas. This provision should be expanded to reach a greater number of families and areas, including those with high indigenous populations, and provided with appropriate resources to support children until they reach school age.

Professionalise community-based programmes. Some countries have chosen to reinforce the offer of continuous training programmes to childcare workers, by increasing the options for shorter, but more regular and better-spaced programmes. Viet Nam, for example, offers opportunities for continuous training of up to two months each year (Neuman, Josephson and Chua, 2015[17]). In Colombia, a similar approach would suit the needs of rural and far-away areas particularly well, since a well-trained childcare workforce is in particularly short supply in these areas, compared to the urban centres. At the same time, childcare needs tend to follow the seasonality of agriculture outputs in these areas, meaning that they pick up when agriculture and harvesting activities intensify, before bouncing back as soon as seasonal factors moderate. Accommodating these variations, unknown to the urban centres, requires a high capacity to adapt.

Furthermore, several countries have adopted more decisive compensation policies. Ecuador, for example, has tripled the pay for community childcare providers from one-third to the full minimum wage (Moussié, 2016[18]). Aside from pay increases, the growing professionalisation can entail feedback effects on the expansion of formalisation if the time devoted to childcare work qualifies the individual for pension credits and health coverage. By increasing the attractiveness of the childcare profession this will support the expansion of labour force participation, particularly women.

Ensure that all five-year-old children begin the transition year on time and are ready for schooling. Colombia could reinforce measures to increase enrolment, such as ensuring a full school day for children in the transition year. By reassuring parents that their young child would be supervised during their work hours and receive adequate nutrition throughout the day, this could have positive returns on their capacity to adapt working hours, with potentially beneficial effects on the labour market participation of mothers. Linking the Familias en Acción programme to children’s attendance at school in the transition year, would provide a financial incentive for parents to enrol their children. Media campaigns or the engagement of local community leaders could be a useful tool to raise awareness of the importance of children entering the transition year in a timely fashion.

Support informal carers. There is no unequivocal definition of informal carer. Under one common definition, an informal carer, or caregiver, is an individual who provides care assistance to those in need of it within the context of a pre-existing relationship – a family member, a close relative, a friend, or neighbour – and without having received qualifying training. However, the definition can also include activity that takes place beyond the sphere of existing relationships, such as the case of a non-professional, non-trained individual who works for pay in a private household without a formal contract. Many migrant workers fall into this category. Informal carers form the first line of support for elderly people in all countries, regardless of the level of development.

Low- and middle-income economies rely on the unpaid labour of informal carers to a high extent because the supply of specialised healthcare services is scarce in these countries, while they also have a sizeable informal care sector. However, in the more advanced economies, the attention devoted to informal care has also increased remarkably, over the past years. This reflects a range of sources of pressure, with longer life expectancy, changing illnesses, the growing number of elderly people with limitations and population ageing, the most frequently cited. Today about 14% of people aged over 50 provide informal care on a daily or weekly basis on average in OECD countries. Three out of five daily carers are women. The recognition of the role those informal caregivers play, as well as of the importance to implement actions directed at improving their conditions, are issues of relevance to all societies.

The OECD has recently carried out an extensive review of the policies to support informal carers in EU countries (Rocard and Llena-Nozal, 2022[19]). Taken together, the key messages of this work provide a framework for responding to challenges as countries increasingly commit themselves to harmonise and protect the rights of informal carers:

In the past decade, countries have taken steps to facilitate access to information to support informal carers through websites and social centres. In France, for example, local information centres, such as “House for older people and carers” are successful in reaching out to carers. In the Netherlands, General Practitioners (GP) are involved in the identification of informal carers. Public services and NGOs also run various types of local information centres. One example for Latin America is the city of La Plata in Argentina where a network of residents, academic experts and service providers has created a website with such information.
Training plays a key role to prevent physical and mental exhaustion of carers and strengthen the quality of long-term care. Countries increasingly adopt schemes to strengthen the access of caregivers to individual learning and online training. In Peru, a study on the effectiveness of measures to improve the lives of people with dementia and their caring families in Lima has shown that even brief, simple interventions focusing on family caregiver education and training about specific long-term illnesses, such as dementia, may be highly beneficial in contexts characterised by low awareness and limited support from formal services. Benefits are visible in significantly reduced stress of family caregivers and increased quality of care for older people (Mariella Guerra et al., 2011[20]).
Respite care is a necessary tool to help carers rest and manage other responsibilities. Countries can include the financial support for respite care in the allowances towards carers or their families. In Germany, for example, a beneficiary family caregiver may be eligible for respite care for 4 weeks a year. In Brazil, the city of Belo Horizonte has introduced a pilot project in which trained social and health workers spend a week working with the families of dependent older people to bring some respite care to people’s homes but also to train family members on how to care for their relatives (UN Women, 2017[21]).

Expanding parental leave in the formal and informal economy

Parental leave policies affect family decisions about the division of paid and unpaid work between partners. When there is no maternity leave, mothers may have to drop out of the labour force and subsequently find it difficult to re-enter. A study of 159 countries finds that female labour force participation is positively correlated with the length of maternity leave, if under 30 weeks (Del Rey, 2021[22]; World Bank, 2022[23]). In OECD countries, the female employment rate rises slightly with the length of the statutory maternity leave but starts to fall when the duration exceeds two years. This underscores that beyond a certain limit, excessively long maternity leave periods may be counter-productive, leading to a widening of the gender employment gap, rather than shrinking it (Thévenon and Solaz, 2012[24]). It also brings to attention the positive balancing role that fathers can play by taking paternity leave and their contribution to counter the frequent pattern whereby couples revert to a traditional division of labour when they become parents. For example, in Norway, couples whose child was born four weeks after the introduction of paternity leave reported fewer conflicts about the division of unpaid work and some improvements in the sharing of housework tasks than couples whose child was born just beforehand (Kotsadam and Finseraas, 2011[25]). Evidence from Sweden and Spain likewise suggests that couples have started to split unpaid work more equally since the introduction of more gender-equal parental leave policies (Hagqvist et al., 2017[26]). For example, a study of the effects of paternity leave on labour market outcomes in Spain showed that as little as two weeks of paid paternity leave can increase a mother’s probability of reemployment shortly after childbirth (Farré, 2017[27]).A detailed analysis from Germany shows that fathers who took parental leave decreased their paid work afterwards and increased the hours devoted to childcare. However, only fathers who took more than two months of leave also increased the involvement in other types of unpaid work (Bünning, 2015[28]).

As mentioned in Chapter 1, in Colombia, two rounds of legislative changes extended maternity leaves, the first in 2011 from 12 to 14 weeks, and the second in 2017 from 14 to 18 weeks. This exceeds the regional average of 15 weeks and the minimum of 14 defined by the 2000 ILO Convention No. 183 on Maternity Protection (Figure 2.2). Mothers of a multiple births or children with disabilities are allowed 2 additional weeks of leave. Paternity leave has also increased in the last year from 8 days to 2 weeks and the law contemplates that for every 1% decrease in the national unemployment rate, paternity leave will be extended by 1 additional week, to a maximum of 5 weeks. Paternity leave in Colombia now exceeds the regional average of 7 days but is far below the OECD average (Figure 2.2). However, it is important to note that the OECD average of around eight weeks reflects in part the extremely high entitlements of one year of paternity leave in Korea and Japan. Very few men in either of the two countries take any paternity leave, let alone a one-year period (Rich, 2019[29]).

Figure 2.2. Maternity and paternity leave allowances in Colombia are above the regional average

The schedule of maternity leave for a dependent employee typically includes 1 week of pre-birth leave (up to 2 weeks if prescribed by a doctor) and 17 weeks of post-birth week. The first 12 weeks of leave are reserved for the mothers, but the last 6 weeks are transferable between parents. Parents may choose to exchange a period of their leave for a part-time work period, equivalent to twice the time of the corresponding chosen period, provided that at least the first 12 weeks of maternity leave are taken in full. During these times of leave, the parent taking the leave is entitled to receive full salary; the cost is covered by the contributory government-sponsored insurance EPS or “Health Promotion Agency” (Entidad Promotora de Salud), assuming that the beneficiary has contributed for at least 9 months before the date of the birth. Regulations in the country include anti-discrimination measures, such as prohibiting employers from requiring a pregnancy test as a condition of employment, for example, or asking employees about their plans to have children.

Maternity, paternity, and parental leave for dependent workers are generous in Colombia, in comparison to other countries in the Latin America region. However, it is important to note that more than half of individuals of working age in the country are employed in the informal sector and as a consequence are rarely covered by these benefits (i.e. independent workers can contribute to the EPS and receive these benefits, but they need to contribute with 12.5% of their declared income). Latest estimates from the National Statistical Institute (DANE, 2022[30]), show that 58% of working age individuals work in the informal sector and that prevalence is slightly higher among men (59.9%) than women (55.4%). Most informal workers (84.6%) are employed in micro enterprises (with 10 or less workers), which tend to be characterised by low levels of productivity and limited capacities to provide benefits, such as parental leave, to its employers.

Once parents return to work, they have little options for easing the time-crunch of simultaneously working and caring for the children. In Colombia, a new law approved in 2021 has reduced the statutory maximum weekly working hours from 48 to 42. This reduction will take effect gradually between 2023 and 2026 (i.e. 47 hours in 2023, 46 hours in 2024, 44 hours in 2025 and 42 hours in 2026), without deductions of salaries and social benefits. As a result, the country has moved closer to the standard work week of 40.4 hours that is common to many OECD countries. While the change in the law points in the right direction, current statistics show a mismatch between reality and regulations in practice. The current law requires a maximum of 48 hours per week for full-time employment, but estimates based on household surveys show that on average a fully employed individual in Colombia works 49.5 hours per week (with differences among sexes, 50.4 hours for men and 48 hours for women) (OECD, 2022[31]).

Policy insights

Establish parental leave with reserved paternity leave weeks. Although Colombia has moved towards allowing more parental leave that either men or women can benefit from, as elsewhere, few fathers take the leave. Several European countries (including Iceland and Sweden) have successfully boosted their take-up through reserving a certain share of the parental leave for fathers, meaning that the total leave that a couple can use is longer if both take it. Another policy option is to lengthen paternity leave, which cannot by definition be transferred to the mother (OECD, 2019[32]).

Extend parental protection to informal workers. Extending maternity protection to workers in the informal sector would be essential to achieve a more balanced distribution of paid and unpaid work activities between partners. In addition, by releasing women who work in the informal sector from the pressure to work too far into pregnancy and to return too soon after childbirth, it would reduce the high exposure of vulnerable populations to healthcare and economic risks (WIEGO/ILO/UNICEF, 2020[33]).

Although the expansion of coverage to workers not employed in the formal sector is a gradual process, given the simultaneity between a sizeable informal sector, which erodes the existing financing base, and a limited fiscal space, which hampers the ability to respond to higher social investment needs, Colombia could consider a non- contributory scheme targeted to most vulnerable parents. A study of OECD economies finds that having the government administer maternity benefits financed by public fund makes it less likely that employers will discriminate against women of childbearing age (Thévenon and Solaz, 2012[24]).

The Familias en Acción programme already provides conditional benefits to poor households with children (identified using a proxy means test). The programme targets households with children up to 18 years of age and has a special provision for those with small children, up to 6 years of age. For these households the programme provides cash transfers every two months conditioned to effective access to children’s health check-ups, as officially recommended by the Ministry of Health and Social Protection. The transfer associated to the conditionalities on health does not increase with the number of children in the household. The coverage of conditional cash transfers in Colombia is still limited; World Bank estimates show that only 41.4% of the poorest quintile of population in rural areas benefit from conditional cash transfers and 26.5% in urban areas (World Bank, 2022[34]).

Reducing the transmission of gender stereotypes through the education system

There is a vast literature on how attitudes about gender roles are transmitted to children, including the role that stereotypes play in influencing the educational and occupational choices of girls and boys (OECD, 2012[35]; Karlson and Simonsson, 2011[36]; Wahlstrom, 2003[37]). They shape and structure ambitions, including the professional careers people aspire to (UNESCO, 2021[38]; OECD, 2020[39]). As noted in Chapter 1, girls may shy away from choosing educational tracks and occupations perceived as traditionally masculine, such as STEM degree programmes (OECD, 2015[40]). Given that occupations characterised by a strong presence of male workers are often better paid, these choices can permanently hamper women’s earning potential (Kunze, 2018[41]). At the same time, boys brought up to believe in traditional gender roles may gravitate away from care professions (OECD, 2017[42]), and may be less willing to participate in housework and childcare activities once they are adults (Lachance-Grzela and Bouchard, 2010[43]).

Gender equality and education are at the heart of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (UNESCO, 2020[44]), which recognises the key role that education can play in challenging and transforming unequal social and gender relations, norms, and practices. A stereotype-free educational approach can allow boys and girls acquiring full awareness of their strengths, along with the tools to nurture them so to be able to pursue their interests and aspirations freely throughout the life cycle (UNESCO, 2004[45]). This approach rests on two notions:

The first is that the education system has a key role to play in tackling the persistence of gender stereotypes (Bousseau and Tap, 1998[46]; OECD, 2012[35]). For example, even though girls have gained access to schooling on a similar scale to boys in many countries, curricula and school materials have not followed through, implying that the representation of gender roles remains the same, using the old archetypes. Country initiatives to address these issues include the introduction of a more inclusive language in the textbooks and improving the balance between numbers of men and women represented in textbooks (UNESCO, 2020[44]). In many countries, including across Latin America, the textbooks continue to act as an important driver to the reproduction of traditional roles assigned to men and women. Research has shown that in textbooks, men often appear in a wide variety of professional (paid) roles and women in domestic (unpaid) roles (EU, 2012[47]). A stereotype-free educational approach can significantly help addressing these gaps and their transmission between generations. In Colombia, a recent qualitative study (Mahecha-Ovalle, 2022[48])on the use of inclusive language in schools revealed a negative attitude of teachers based on the presumption that this language does not follow the official guidelines of the Real Academia Española and therefore should not be adopted in formal education. The authors interpret this evidence to conclude that many teachers still lack familiarity with the notion of inclusive language and its potential as a vehicle to address gender stereotypes in classrooms.
The second concept assumes that the potential for teachers to support students’ self-esteem, confidence and life paths remains largely underused. Several studies reveal that the teachers’ attitude affects the interest of the students in school subjects, influencing, in turn, career orientations (OECD, 2012[35]; OECD, 2015[40]). If teachers do not trust girls’ scientific abilities and provide them with less encouraging feedbacks, for example, girls’ success and interest in these subjects can be reduced (OXFAM, 2005[49]; OXFAM, 2007[50]). In Australia, Norway and Hong Kong, China, the influence of gender norms on the beliefs of teachers are already apparent at the pre-primary level and manifest through a stronger engagement of boys in games that develop scientific understanding (UNESCO, 2020[51]). Female teachers in science and mathematics have a potentially important role to play in addressing these biases and in reorienting girls’ interests and choices towards STEM disciplines (OECD, 2019[52]; Breda et al., 2020[53]; Ahmed and Mudrey, 2019[54]). For Chile, a study by the Ministry of Women and the National Women’s Service (SERNAM, 2009[55]) showed that teachers often address classes using masculine forms (such as “boys” and the male forms for all children and students, regardless of the gender). When giving examples, they tend to confine female characters to the “private world” spheres, namely the domestic, maternal and care settings, with male characters placed in the “public world” settings where fully-fledged economic activities take place.

Gender biases of parents can also influence girls’ expectations and career choices. As mentioned in Chapter 1, access to higher education in STEM disciplines for girls represent a worldwide problem, despite the fact that these disciplines generate higher returns to education and higher employability levels. Data from PISA assessments suggest that girls do not seem to be getting much encouragement from their parents. In all countries and economies surveyed on this question in 2012, parents were more likely to expect their sons, rather than their daughters, to work in a STEM field – even when boys and girls performed equally well in mathematics and science. In Colombia the share of men graduates in STEM subjects exceeds the corresponding share of women graduates by about 21 percentage points.

As part of its broader policies to promote equal opportunities for men and women, the Colombian Government has introduced important measures to address discriminatory practices in the educational sector. The 2018-22 Plan Nacional de Desarollo (National Development Plan) included objectives to “promote equal access and participation of women in the labour market; promote the right of women to a life free of violence; promote the sexual health and reproductive rights of girls, boys and adolescents and reduce harmful practices related to child marriage and early unions; and, increase the participation of women in decision-making spaces” (National Planning Department Colombia, 2022[56]). On implementation, it included two strategies related to education, aimed at reducing girls’ dropouts and gender-based violence in schools, respectively (statistics show that in 2021 76.1% of reported violence cases among children and teenagers between 6 and 17 years of age were targeted to girls) (Observatorio Nacional de Violencias de Género, 2022[57]).These strategies were reflected in the Plan Sectorial de Educación 2018-22 (Sectorial Plan for Education).

As reported by the Ministry of Education (Ministry of Education, Colombia, 2022[58]), between 2018 and 2021 the implementation of the Sectorial Plan’s strategies for women’s equality included three main activities: (i) technical assistance to Education Secretaries nationwide, (ii) teacher training programmes that promote gender inclusiveness and (iii) the development of protocols to prevent gender-based violence in schools and higher education institutions. The first activity, technical assistance to Education Secretaries, focused on the implementation of warning systems to monitor girls’ dropouts. These systems gather information on the reasons behind dropouts putting special emphasis on those related to gender, such as teen pregnancy, gender-based violence or care obligations. The second activity, teacher training programmes, included guidelines on how to promote the participation of girls and boys in all disciplines (including math for girls and language for boys). As a result, by 2021, 5 700 teachers received this training (representing 71.3% of the end-goal included in the National Development Plan 2018-22 of 8 000 by 2022) (Ministry of Education, Colombia, 2022[58]). The third activity, involving protocols for the prevention of gender-based violence and discrimination based on gender for schools and higher education institutions, was prepared by the ministry with the goal of providing guidance to institutions on how to implement their own plan to prevent violence against women (Ministry of Education, Colombia, 2022[59]). Along with efforts from the Ministry of Education, Departments of Education at the subnational level developed guidelines to promote a more inclusive gender approach in local schools. In particular, the region of Antioquia (Secretaria de las Mujeres de Antioaquia, 2019[60]) and the district of Bogota (Secretaria de Educacion del Distrito de Bogota, 2015[61]) developed protocols to guide schools in the identification of harmonised approaches to tackle gender biases in the classrooms.

The educational commitments of the National Development Plan 2022-26 recognise the role that training and upskilling play in reducing gender gaps and fostering the economic autonomy of women through greater job opportunities and productive inclusion. From early childhood to higher education the Plan aims to strengthen teacher training strategies and the dissemination of good practices to promote access of girls, adolescents and young people to STEM disciplines, environmental education and other relevant education programmes with a gender and intercultural approach.

Policy insights

Mainstream trainings to help teachers becoming more mindful about the importance of gender attitudes and stereotypes at school. This could be done by building on the experience with implementing teacher training programmes that promote gender inclusiveness under the Plan Sectorial de Educación 2018-22 (Sectorial Plan for Education) and other small-scale initiatives from sub-national governments such as Bogota and Antioquia. For example, there is evidence that many teachers in Colombia lack familiarity with the notion of inclusive language and its potential as a vehicle to address gender stereotypes in classrooms. One lesson from the international experience is that the efforts to create a culture conducive to gender equality should start from early education and with the willing support of the teachers (OECD, 2012[35]). Specific training is important to help the teachers adapting their pedagogical approaches to the age group of the children (UNESCO, 2017[62]). For example, teachers have played a pivotal role in the initiatives undertaken by the government of the Flanders (Belgium) to raise awareness about gender roles in Flemish schools. Teachers received trainings to detect the presence of gender attitudes and stereotypes in the curriculum material and were encouraged to propose solutions on how to improve the situation. There is evidence of teachers having subsequently become more mindful of the importance to avert the use of a spoken language with the children that could favour the development of stereotyped gender roles. Assignments that could reinforce the development of identity aspects (girls to carry out organisational and support roles such as taking notes, planning events, co-ordinating group work, and so on) have gradually diminished. These outcomes were helped by changing the organisation of the classrooms and making recourse to mixed groups to limit splitting boys and girls (Council of Europe, 2014[63]). The lessons from this experience provide a potentially useful benchmark against which to assess the pedagogical guides issued by the Colombian Government and progress with implementation.

Strengthen the engagement of families in the process of creating gender-sensitive education. Although the schools play an important role in the education of future citizens, involving parents is key when introducing a new educational approach aimed at strengthening gender-sensitive education. The family often acts as “spokesperson” of entrenched prejudices and parents could view the new initiatives to change course with suspicion. The Ministry of Education in Colombia already includes as part of its sectoral plan 2018-22 a strategy to support the Alianza Familia Escuela (Family-School Alliances) (Ministry of Education, Colombia, 2022[64]). These Alliances promote joint efforts between educational institutions and families and incorporate activities for the promotion of gender equality (Ministry of Education, Colombia, 2022[58]; 2019[65]). International experience can serve as inspiration to strengthen gender issues in the Family-School Alliances. In Peru the Ministry of Education launched a national campaign in 2019 to inform parents about the importance of mainstreaming gender-sensitive practices in education and their interactions with the curriculum. Almost 140 information centres opened to explain families how and why the gender approach is implemented in the education curriculum (MINEDUC, 2019[66]). In Ireland, as part of the gender mainstreaming strategy, the Ministry of Education and Science developed guidelines, for use by the whole school community, including parents. The guidelines for primary and secondary schools provide parents with information about school obligations in relation to equality legislation, explanation of gender mainstreaming and what it entails and suggestions for actions that parents can undertake at schools (Council of Europe, 2011[67]; EIGE, 2020[68]). The pedagogical guidelines implemented by the Chilean Government encourage the schools to take a more pro-active role to engage the families by exploring options for co-operation with the parents’ associations (OECD, 2021[69]). The guidelines include a video that parents can watch for their background ahead of participating to a discussion meeting. The Spanish Irene programme informs and trains parents as part of a wider initiative aimed at preventing sexual violence committed by young cohorts in secondary education (Council of Europe, 2014[63]).

Scale up efforts to increase the interest of girls in STEM disciplines while promoting role models. In June 2021, the Colombian Ministry of Education and the Regional Office of the Siemens Stiftung Foundation published a guide directed to pre-school teachers to promote STEM disciplines among girls and a more gender inclusive approach in the classroom (Ministry of Education, Colombia and Siemens Stiftung Foundation, 2021[70]). The same year, the Ministry of Technology and Communications and the Maloka Corporation launched the programme “Chicas STEAM” (STEAM Girls) which aims at promoting the interest of girls and young women between the ages of 12 and 15 in STEM disciplines (Maloka Corporation, 2022[71]).

The Peruvian experience provides an interesting example of continued efforts to promote STEM disciplines among girls. Eureka in Peru is a long-standing nationwide programme on science and technology that dates to the mid-1980s. It aims at stimulating the curiosity of children in primary and secondary education for STEM disciplines. Teachers and students work together to the development of a scientific culture using pedagogical approaches adapted to the age of the children. Between 2012 and 2022, the National Council for Science, Technology, and Technological Innovation (CONCYTEC), in partnership with private donors implemented the programme MaCTec Peru (Mini Academy for Sciences & Technology). The programme aimed at reducing the gender gap in STEM fields and targeted young Peruvian girls (between 8 and 11 years old) from urban and rural areas. The main activity of the programme consisted of workshop participated by established scientists at which girls from different backgrounds, learned, created and experimented. Upon returning home, they shared their experience and applied their learning with their peers and possibly more widely with their communities. MaCTec Peru was awarded the UNESCO Prize for Girls’ and Women’s Education for its “Mobile MaCTec Bus Labs” project (UNESCO, 2023[72]). Mentoring and role models have shown to have concrete positive results in stimulating girls’ interest in STEM fields.

Similar to the MacTEC initiative in Peru, in 2017, the OECD and the Government of Mexico jointly launched the “NinaSTEM Pueden” programme, a project aimed at stimulating the curiosity and passion of Mexican girls for STEM subjects through educational opportunities outside the classroom, inspired by meetings with women mentors who have excelled in these fields (OECD, 2020[73]). Another Mexican programme,”Codigo X”, promotes the inclusion of girls and women in the ICT sector by organizing workshops, conferences and hackathons for girls and young women on digital literacy, robotics and programming, while showing them the different opportunities they have in technology careers (OECD, 2018[79]).

To further strengthen ongoing initiatives, the Government of Colombia could expand teacher trainings to tackle gender biases in STEM educations (Corbett and Hill, 2015[74]; OECD, 2017[42]). These efforts could include by equipping the teachers with appropriate pedagogical tools to help children, particularly, girls, overcoming the anxiety about mathematics and their lack of confidence in their own science and mathematics abilities. Initiatives such as the one implemented by VHTO – the Dutch National Expert Organization on Girls/Women and Science/Technology – train teachers to help the young generations to become aware of their talents and how to use them in STEM professions (VHTO, (Dutch) National Expert Organisation Girls/ Women and Science/Technology, 2014[75]).

Keeping the momentum for change is essential, given that fighting gender stereotypes through the education system is a long-term process. Enhancing gender equality in education is a long-term process that requires capitalizing on present and previous efforts to promote improvements. By implication, continuous monitoring of achievements can be of great value to put Colombia on a sustainable path of progress. As part of a defined long-term strategy, Colombia could identify a clear set of intermediate targets and standards, against which to organise an independent monitoring body in charge of assessing progress and disseminating success stories at school.

Box 2.2. Summary of policy options for reducing barriers to sharing paid and unpaid work equally in Colombia

Institutional, legal and cultural constraints lie in the way of reducing the barriers to achieving a more equitable sharing of unpaid work activities in Colombia. The OECD suggests to:

Create a more comprehensive care system

Foster ongoing efforts to make early childhood education and care (ECEC) programmes accessible to all children. As an integral part of the Programa Hogar Comunitario de Bienestar (Community Welfare Home Program), the community homes are an effective means to reach households in rural and remote areas. This programme should be expanded to reach a greater number of families and areas, including those with a high concentration of indigenous populations. It should also be provided with appropriate resources to support children until they reach school age. For children, the access to affordable and reliable ECEC programmes mean improved learning opportunities, alongside stronger opportunities to strengthen well-being and standards of living. For mothers will a secure environment for their children means more opportunities to actively seek a job in the labour market and spend more time in a paid work activity. To achieve the dual dividends of an inclusive and effective ECEC system, Colombia will need to further address inequities in ECEC participation levels, particularly among the most disadvantaged children who stand to reap the greatest benefits.
Professionalise community-based childcare programmes. Some countries have chosen to reinforce the offer of continuous training programmes to childcare workers, by increasing the options for shorter, but more regular and better-spaced programmes. Viet Nam, for example, offers opportunities for continuous training of up to two months each year. In Colombia, a similar approach would suit particularly well the needs of rural and far-away areas, where a well-trained childcare workforce is in particularly short supply, compared to the urban centres. At the same time, childcare needs tend to follow the seasonality of agriculture outputs in these areas, meaning that they pick up when agriculture and harvesting activities intensify, before bouncing back as soon as seasonal factors moderate. Accommodating these variations, unknown to the urban centres, requires a high capacity to adapt. Several countries including Ecuador, for example, have adopted more decisive compensation policies for community childcare providers. Aside from pay increases, the growing professionalisation can entail feedbacks effects on the expansion of formalisation if the time devoted to childcare work qualifies the individual for pension credits and health coverage. By increasing the attractiveness of the childcare profession this will support the expansion of labour force participation, particularly women.
Ensure that all 5-year-old children begin the transition year on time and ready for schooling. Colombia could reinforce measures to increase enrolment, such as ensuring a full school day for children in the transition year. By reassuring parents that their young child would be supervised during their work hours and receive adequate nutrition throughout the day, this could have positive returns on their capacity to adapt work hours, with potentially beneficial effects on the labour market participation of mothers. Linking the Familias en Acción programme to children’s attendance at school in the transition year, would provide a financial incentive for parents to enrol their children. Media campaigns or the engagement of local community leaders could be a useful tool to raise awareness of the importance of children entering the transition year in a timely fashion.
Improve the conditions of informal caregivers. The OECD has recently developed a framework for helping countries with their commitments to recognise and protect the rights of informal carers. Some of the framework’s recommendations could be of interest to Colombia. They include supporting information sharing through websites and social centres, alongside more training to prevent physical and mental exhaustion of carers and to strengthen the quality of long-term care. In addition, respite care is a necessary tool to help carers rest and manage other responsibilities. Financial support to carers can take the form of cash benefits, either paid to carers directly through a carer allowance, or indirectly via those receiving the care. Beyond providing financial support to carers, countries increasingly take measures to ensure that caring time qualifies for pension credits and that carers benefit from health coverage.

Expand parental leave in the formal and informal economy

Establish parental leave with reserved paternity leave weeks. Although Colombia has moved towards allowing more parental leave that either men or women can benefit from, as elsewhere, few fathers take the leave. Several OECD countries, including Canada, many European countries, Japan and Korea have successfully boosted take-up among fathers through reserving a certain share of the parental leave for fathers, meaning that the total leave that a couple can use is longer if both partners take it. Another policy option is to lengthen paternity leave, which can per definition not be transferred to the mother.
Extend parental protection to informal workers. Extending maternity protection to workers in the informal sector is essential to achieve a more balanced distribution of paid and unpaid work activities between partners. In addition, by releasing women who work in the informal sector from the pressure to work too far into pregnancy and to return too soon after childbirth, it will help reducing the high exposure of the vulnerable populations to healthcare and economic risks. Latest estimates show that only 41.4% of the poorest quintile of population in rural areas and 26.5% in urban areas benefit from conditional cash transfers. An expansion of the coverage of the conditional cash transfer programme Familias en Acción (Families in Action), which targets poor households with children, could support maternal protection of the most vulnerable.

Reduce the transmission of gender stereotypes through the education system

Mainstream training to help teachers becoming more mindful about the importance of gender attitudes and stereotypes at school. This could be done by building on the experience with implementing teacher training programmes that promote gender inclusiveness and other small-scale initiatives from sub-national governments such as Bogota and Antioquia. Many teachers in Colombia lack familiarity with the notion of inclusive language and its potential as a vehicle to address gender stereotypes in classrooms. International experience shows that the efforts to create a culture conducive to gender equality should start from early education and with the willing support of the teachers. Specific training is important to help the teachers adapting their pedagogical approaches to the age group of the children. For example, teachers have played a pivotal role in the initiatives undertaken by the government of the Flanders (Belgium) to raise awareness about gender roles in Flemish schools.
Strengthen the engagement of families in the process of creating gender-sensitive education. Although the schools play an important role in the education of future citizens, involving parents is key when introducing a new educational approach aimed at strengthening gender-sensitive education. The family often acts as “spokesperson” of entrenched prejudices and parents could view the new initiatives to change course with suspicion. The Ministry of Education in Colombia already promotes through the Alianza Familia Escuela (Family-School Alliances) joint efforts between educational institutions and families and incorporate activities for the promotion of gender equality. International experience can serve as inspiration to strengthen gender issues in the Family-School Alliances. For example, the Spanish Irene programme informs and trains parents as part of a wider initiative aimed at preventing sexual violence committed by young cohorts in secondary education.
Scale up efforts to increase the interest of girls in STEM disciplines while promoting role models. In 2021, the Colombian Ministry of Education and the Regional Office of the Siemens Stiftung Foundation published a guide directed to pre-school teachers to promote STEM disciplines among girls and a more gender inclusive approach in the classroom. To further strengthen ongoing initiatives, the Government of Colombia could expand teacher trainings to tackle gender biases in STEM educations. These efforts could include by equipping the teachers with appropriate pedagogical tools to help children, particularly, girls, overcoming the anxiety about mathematics and their lack of confidence in their own science and mathematics abilities. Initiatives such as the one implemented by the Dutch National Expert Organization on Girls/Women and Science/Technology train teachers to help the young generations to become aware of their talents and how to use them in STEM professions.

Making women’s paid work pay more

Ensuring access to quality education for all

Although most countries have made important strides in expanding opportunities of access to quality education, giving all children and youth access to quality education remains essential to support well-being and to create the conditions for economic independence. Poor children and young people who drop out of the school system prematurely are more likely to find themselves in situations of vulnerability, to be exposed to violence and to adopt risky behaviours. Adolescent girls and young women from the poorest households are more likely than girls and young women from wealthier households to become pregnant or give birth before the age of 18 (UNFPA, 2013[76]).

As discussed in Chapter 1, in Colombia educational outcomes are highly heterogeneous. Attendance of primary schools is high (93%), regardless of whether children live in rural or urban areas. However, enrolment rates decline strongly with age especially in rural settings: more than half of women between 13 and 24 years old do not attend any educational institution in rural areas, compared to around 37% of women in urban areas. For the group of 6 to 11 years old, the rate of school attendance among children who belong to families self-identified as indigenous is 74%, compared to 92% among non-indigenous families. For the group of 12-18 years old, the rate falls to 55% for indigenous children, compared to 74% for other children (Freire et al., 2015[77]). In the same line, the average years of education vary significantly across socio-economic groups. Statistics on children living in rural areas show that they receive on average five and a half years of education, compared to more than nine years for children from urban areas. In the rural areas, the illiteracy rate among children over 15 years old exceeds 12%, which is almost four times higher than in the urban areas (3.3%) (USAID, 2020[78]).

Work activities outside school influence educational attainment. In Colombia, regardless of sex, about 1 million or 9.8% of children between 5 and 17 years of age work, either outside their house or inside their homes doing chores for 15 hours or more per week (DANE, 2022[79]). While the prevalence of child labour outside the house is higher among boys (6.4% vs. 3.2% for girls), this changes when house chores are factored, with a prevalence of 10.8% among girls and 8.9% for boys. Prevalence also increases with age, showing a bigger burden among teenagers between 15 and 17 years of age (27.5%), compared to smaller children between 5 and 14 years of age (4.5%). For those working outside the house, the sector with the biggest concentration of child labour is agriculture (45.6% of child labour outside the house is concentrated in agriculture activities), indicating a higher prevalence of this issue in rural areas.

Teenage pregnancy also stands out as a major source of concern in Colombia. Although the adolescent fertility rate has decreased over the last two decades in Colombia (World Bank Group, 2019[80]), the number of births per 1 000 women between 15 and 19 years of age is the highest among OECD countries. By 2020, in Colombia the adolescent fertility rate equalled 53.2 births per 1 000 women aged 15 to 19, significantly higher than the OECD average of 9.4 (OECD, 2022[81]). Teenage mothers are less educated than their peers, since adolescence motherhood associates to a high probability of attending classes irregularly, repeating school grades and leaving formal education prematurely (OECD, 2018[82]). In Colombia in 2018, 86.2% of women that had a child during their teen years only attained primary or secondary education, compared to 71.5% among those that postpone motherhood (UNFPA Colombia, 2022[83]). Half of teenage girls dropping out of school in Colombia cite pregnancy as a principal cause (Daniels, 2015[84]).

Early motherhood is not equally distributed by socio-economic contexts. Adolescent pregnancy is higher among women who are in the poorest quintile (5.5%), are indigenous and live in polygamous families (5.1%), live in rural areas (4.8%), or in the Region of the Orinoquía and Amazonía (4.6%). Partly related to these factors, adolescent pregnancy is higher among displaced women (4.4%) or reside in municipalities directly affected by the internal armed conflict (3.8%) (Murad-Rivera R, 2018[85]). In 2015, the percentage of women aged 13 to 19 who are already mothers or pregnant with their first child in the lowest quintile is 6 times higher than those in the highest quintile; among women with only primary education, it is five times higher than the percentage of women with higher education.

Moreover, there is a strong correlation between teenage pregnancies and gender-based violence. Registered fathers of new-born babies of 10 to 14 years old mothers are 5 to 10 years older than the mother (UNFPA Colombia, 2022[83]). In Colombia, having sexual relations with a minor under 14 years old is illegal and sentenced by penal law (UNFPA Colombia, 2022[83]).

Policy insights

Continue the efforts to reward poor families for their engagement in their children’s education. The opportunity cost of primary education refers to the loss of returns accrued by the family from child labour and/or from the contribution that the child gives to the household by absolving domestic tasks, such as taking care of younger siblings, performing household chores, and caring for livestock. Opportunity costs are especially relevant in poor, rural, agrarian households, where child labour is in high demand and therefore the immediate returns from schooling may be lower than the returns from the labour market. In certain contexts, the issue is of greater concerns for girls than for boys, reflecting the gendered distribution of household chores, marriage customs, and the lack of employment opportunities for girls after schooling. Boys may be responsible for livestock or other farming activities in the family.

By providing regular transfer benefits to parents of poor background who chose to keep their children at school, conditional cash transfers (CCTs) programmes should entice a decline of the opportunity cost. In Colombia, the programme Familias en Acción, which provides conditional benefits to poor households with children up to 18 years of age, encompasses a special provision for those households with children in school age. For these households the programme provides cash transfers conditioned to enrolment in school and a minimum of 80% attendance of the scheduled classes per school bimester. This transfer increases with the number of children in the household (up to three children), population density of area of residency (transfers’ amounts are differentiated for four types of areas and reflect higher opportunity costs of urban areas) and school grade (higher for children in high school). A recent impact evaluation shows that Familias en Acción increases the probability of school enrolment in the main 14 cities of the country and in rural areas by 12 percentage points (Arteaga, Trujillo and Gomez, 2019[86]). The programme also shows impacts in reducing the probability of teenage pregnancy in rural areas and child labour in urban areas by 4 percentage points respectively. Cortés, Gallego and Maldonado (2016[87]) argue that the programme could boost its impacts in reducing teenage pregnancy if its renewal is conditional to school success.

Another evaluation of Familias en Acción identifies five main challenges in the first 10 years of operation of the programme (Angulo, 2016[88]). First, improved targeting mechanisms have helped to reduce exclusion errors of the poorest and most vulnerable families. These improvements have been introduced in recognition of the fact that socio-economic status may evolve overtime and accordingly the algorithm used to estimate poverty must be able to capture changes in status timely. Second, continuous investment in time and resources were necessary to strengthen local governments’ technical capacities for the verification of co-responsibilities in education and health in the field. Third, existing barriers preventing accessibility in different contexts have proven challenging, so that the programme is in constant revision of its payment strategy by promoting simplification and the financial inclusion of beneficiaries. Fourth, it would be important to preserve the integrity of the programme by preventing the risk of political manipulation, particularly by the local authorities and especially during targeting and verification of conditionalities, while also promoting a strategy to raise the implementation capacities of the municipalities. Fifth, it is important to keep a strong link between the programme and the overall national poverty reduction strategy. This means expanding the program’s co-ordination efforts to better connect beneficiaries with initiatives outside the core goal of the programme, such as those promoted by the Ministry of Labour to foster labour market inclusion. All in all, important efforts have already been achieved to improve Familias en Acción in the face of emerging challenges and changing realities on the ground. Looking forward, maintaining the same responsiveness will remain a key to ensure impact.

The intention of the NDP 2022-26 is to harmonise the programmes of conditional and unconditional monetary transfers in charge of the Administrative Department for Social Prosperity (art. 66 of Law 2 294 of 2023). In addition, it promises to continue working on family and community accompaniment to overcome poverty, including with an emphasis on female-headed households.

Communicate the benefits of completing studies. Students from low-income families often are ill-informed about the monetary and social returns of education and the wider range of job opportunities studies can open the door to. Influenced by the perception that education does not affect their future well-being, students may drop out of school prematurely to support the income of their families. In 2021, the Colombian Ministry of Education launched with the support of three Foundations (Santo Domingo, Education above All and Pies Descalzos) the campaign Este cuento es tuyo (“This story is yours”) to promote school enrolment, retention and completion of all grades in the context of post pandemic schools’ reopening (Ministry of Education, Colombia, 2021[89]). International experience has proven the potential of communicational campaigns as a rapid way to inform students about the benefits of education at moderate costs. In Peru, the programme Decidiendo para un futuro mejo’ (Deciding for a better future) implemented by an innovation lab inside the Ministry of Education (MineduLAB) consisted of a campaign to transmit information on the monetary and social returns of basic and higher education through videos and infographics sent to educational institutions (MineduLAB, 2018[90]). The videos showed students reflecting on the importance to study and have goals, based on their personal experience and family environment. They also provided information on funding opportunities to higher education, such as via scholarships and educational credits. The results of a randomised experiment to evaluate the pilot programme show a significant decrease in the number of dropouts (MineduLAB, 2018[90]). The observed progress of student performances was particularly strong among girls, which reveals that one of the most important potentials of the programme resides in the ability to help closing gender gaps in education.

School mentoring and student counselling are also a key to making girls and young women stay in the education system. Interestingly, private sector can play a leading role in these initiatives. One example is The Girls’ Network (https://www.thegirlsnetwork.org.uk/), which is a UK national charity aiming to inspire and empower girls aged 14 to 19 from disadvantaged communities by connecting them to a peer mentor, and a network of professional women acting as role models. The initiative involves partnerships with schools and colleges. All mentors are women who have received a yearlong training in mentoring, after having undergone an application process. More than 500 trained mentors give practical advice on how to identify and access opportunities and how to develop the confidence to seize them.

Ensure comprehensive sexuality education and information at school and out-of-school. International guidelines from UNESCO points to the importance of Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE) as a curriculum-based process of teaching and learning about the cognitive, emotional, physical, and social aspects of sexuality. CSE addresses sexual and reproductive health challenges – reproduction, modern contraception, pregnancy, and childbirth, along with sexually transmissible infections (STIs). Insofar as it uses a human-rights-based approach, CSE involves raising awareness among young people about own rights and the respect of the rights of others, including the right to safe responsible and respectful sexual choices free of coercion and violence. The goal is to equip young people with the tools that they need to achieve healthy lives and relationships. Awareness about the importance of this objective is particularly important, given the growing exposure of young people to scientifically incorrect, conflicting, and confusing information about sexuality and gender. The case of Finland, which represents an advanced model of comprehensive sex education in Europe, points to the effectiveness of the co-operation between school and health authorities on sexuality education for the young as one key strength of the Finnish model (Kontula, 2010[91]). Peru launched in 2012 the Multisector Plan for the Prevention of Pregnancy in Adolescents 2013-21. This plan sets out five main objectives: 1. Postpone the start of sexual activity in adolescence; 2. Increase the percentage of adolescents who complete secondary education; 3. Ensure the inclusion of Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE) in the National Curricular Framework; 4. Increase the use of modern contraceptive methods among teenagers; and 5. Reduce sexual violence against girls and teenagers (MINSA, 2012[92]). As part of the implementation of the plan the ministries of Health and Education launched initiatives that include: (i) the creation of adolescent-friendly spaces in primary health centres; (ii) development and dissemination of guidelines and virtual courses for teachers on comprehensive sexual education at all levels of education; and (iii) campaigns to assist girls and teenagers who are victims of violence.

In Colombia, several laws and national plans have ratified CSE as a key element of formal education. The General Education Law (Ley General de Educación, law 115) from 1994 mandates all educational institutions to include sexual education as a cross-cutting issue for students at different ages (Congress of the Republic of Colombia, 1994[93]). The 2012-21 Public Health Plan included as an objective that “by 2021, 80% of public educational institutions guarantee that girls, boys, adolescents and young people have sexual education, based on the exercise of human, sexual and reproductive rights, from a gender and differential approach” (Profamilia, 2022[94]). In 2013, the School Coexistence Law (Ley de Convivencia Escolar, law 1620) highlights the relevance of sexual education from a human rights approach. The National Policy on Sexuality, Sexual Rights and Reproductive Rights, revised in 2014, also includes the objective to facilitate access to sexual education from the health sector and other sectors such as education (Ministry of Health and Social Protection, Colombia, 2014[95]).

The NDP 2022-26 takes on a commitment to step up the policies addressing sexual and reproductive rights using a broad ranged sexual education approach, including effective access to contraceptives.

Even though it has legal backing, the implementation of CSE has proven challenging in Colombia. In 2008 the Ministry of Education in collaboration with UNFPA launched the Program of Education in Sexuality and Construction of Citizenship (PESCC) aimed at developing life competencies for a healthy sexual and reproductive life. The programme was initially piloted directly by the national Ministry of Education but in 2010, after its incorporation in the national Educational Policy, resources were transferred to local governments states which became in charge of its implementation (Beltrán Villamizar, Galvis Aparicio and Vargas Beltrán, 2013[96]). An evaluation of the programme in 2014 showed that implementation was low (only about 17% of public schools implemented PESCC in 2013) mainly due to lack of commitment of key implementing actors who perceive sexual education as irrelevant for the school context (Universidad de los Andes, 2014[97]). However, where correctly implemented, PESCC supports outcomes of increased knowledge, better attitudes, and improved sexual practices. In particular, the evaluation identified a significant increase in access to information on available health and contraception services. In 2021 a draft bill aimed at including sexual education as part of official schools’ curriculum was discussed in Congress but encountered opposition and was not approved (Congress of the Republic of Colombia, 2021[98]).

With the average years of education varying significantly across socio-economic groups in Colombia, it is essential that CSE programmes reach out-of-school young people and children, who are often most vulnerable to misinformation, coercion, and exploitation. The UNFPA’s guideline on out-of-school CSE complements the initially provided guideline of UNESCO by providing evidence and informed insights to address this specific dimension (UNFPA, 2020[99]). It recommends a more informal and flexible setting than may be possible in school, involving smaller learning groups, adaptable class times, more varied and creative delivery of the curriculum, and more interaction among learners. One important aspect relates to the question about who should be in charge of delivering the information. Facilitators can encourage learners to share questions and perspectives that they may be reluctant to voice within a learning environment that they perceive as excessively formalistic. Of essence is ensuring that both girls and boys feel that they can safely and comfortably raise questions, clarify doubts and address concerns. Trained young individuals who students can identify as peers can help the creation of a supportive information setting.

Provide medical and financial support to vulnerable girls and teenage mothers. Young mothers concentrate among the most vulnerable and have limited access to key resources such as medical, psychological and income for basic needs. The Instituto Colombiano de Bienestar Familiar (Colombian Institute of Family Welfare) has a programme targeted to vulnerable adolescents and women over 18 who are pregnant or lactating that provides psychological support, referrals to relevant health and education services and, for cases of mothers without family support, temporary housing (ICBF, 2016[100]). International experience shows the potential of this type of interventions. In Uruguay a programme aims at promoting educational projects for mothers under the age of 23. It provides mothers with financial support for childcare, alongside with social support to help them acquire skills and competencies. In Australia, the government has created several transfer programmes for teenage parents, including the JET Childcare Fee Assistance subsidy, for example, which allows young mothers and partners paying for the care of the children during work or school times. Paid directly to childcare providers, the amount depends on the income of the family, the child’s age and the hours that the mother and partner spend at work or in education. These programmes underscore the importance of targeting, especially with a view to reaching out to rural and remote areas.

Promoting women in non-traditional careers and leadership positions

In Colombia four in ten businesses are led by a woman. The majority of these businesses are SMEs (78.2% of business led by women are micro or small,17.5% medium and 4.3% large) and concentrate in sectors associated to traditional female roles (food production 21.4% and clothing manufacture 15.6%) (DANE, ONU Mujeres and CPEM, 2022[101]). Smaller firms are typically less capable than large companies to support work-life balance and promote women’s careers. Conversely, large Colombian companies are managed almost exclusively by men. Female share of seats on boards of the largest publicly listed companies in 2021 is 12.9%, below the OECD average of 28% (OECD, 2022[102]), but higher than the latest estimate for Latin America of 10.4% (Deloitte, 2022[103]).

Several barriers prevent Colombia women from attaining leadership positions. As in other Latin American countries, a key barrier relates to the influence of gender stereotyping about leadership figures and the entrenched prejudices they have to overcome to rise in their careers (Nathan Associates, 2016[104]). Managers are more likely to hire candidates whose characteristics are similar to theirs but since most hiring managers are men, women applications are less likely to be retained. This discourages them from submitting their candidacy for senior management positions. Furthermore, talent is frequently defined as a pattern of behaviour associated with male characteristics – such as assertiveness and competitiveness, for example – which reinforces the belief that good managers are men (Cabrera, 2007[105]; Warren and Walters, 1998[106]). Career interruptions due to maternity further reduce opportunities for promotion (UNDP, 2010[107]). In addition, corporate, academic, or political leadership positions require long work hours, a high degree of flexibility and a disposition to travel. These characteristics are difficult to reconcile with the fact that women in Colombia spend significantly more time on family and domestic obligations than men do.

Balancing work and life responsibilities is very difficult for women in scientific academic fields. This means particularly high risks of career slowdowns, when not abandonments. In Colombia, women only represent 37.8% of the countries’ researchers and while their participation in medical and health scientific research activities is high (59.6%), they are underrepresented in natural sciences (28.2%), engineering and technology (18.4%), agricultural sciences (37.6%), social sciences (46.4%), and humanities and arts (27.1%) (Franco-Orozco and Franco-Orozco, 2018[108]). This unequal situation persists in scientific leadership, where only 33.6% of scientific groups in Colombia are led by female researchers. On top of underrepresentation, women tend to get paid less. In undergraduate programmes the highest gender pay gap is found in medical and health sciences degrees (17.2%) and in postgraduate programmes in engineering, architecture, and urbanism degrees (37.6%) (Franco-Orozco and Franco-Orozco, 2018[108]).

Regarding the representation of women in congressional electoral lists, Colombia established a statutory share of 30% in 2011. This was reached for the first time by the recently elected 2022 Congress, showing a significant increase in women’s participation from the previous Congress elected in 2018 in which the share of congresswomen was 19.7%. With these results, Colombia is above the global average for women’s participation in parliaments (25%), and closer to the average in the Americas region (32.4%) (DANE, ONU Mujeres and CPEM, 2022[101])

Colombia is also showing important progress in the representation of women in the executive branch and in management positions of public entities in general. The last (2018) and current (2022) administrations had a woman as vice-president and equal number of men and women in ministerial cabinet positions. Worldwide only 22% of cabinet positions are held by women (World Bank Group, 2019[80]) (DANE, ONU Mujeres and CPEM, 2022[101]). By 2021, women represent 46% of management positions of public entities, with 45% females in highest decision-making level and 47% in other levels of decision-making, that is higher than the statutory share of 30% established for public entities by the law 581 in 2000 (DANE, ONU Mujeres and CPEM, 2022[101]).

At the local level the situation is less positive, only 2 of the 32 governors are female (6.3%) and 132 of 1 099 districts (12%) have female mayors (DANE, ONU Mujeres and CPEM, 2022[101]). As identified by a 2015 World Bank report, different obstacles prevent women from participating in politics in Colombia: (i) the quotas established by law are often not enforced due to the lack of effective sanctions, (ii) a male-dominated political culture and the prevalence of patriarchal social norms dissuade women from engaging in political activities, especially at higher levels; and, (iii) political violence against women, nearly two-thirds (63%) of women in politics report receiving some form of aggression (such as restrictions on women speaking and the refusal to grant them the full financial and administrative resources required for their public duties) due to their gender (World Bank Group, 2019[80]).

Policy insights

Create targets for women’s representation in private companies. Firms with above-average representation of women on their boards throughout the world tend to be rated higher for corporate social responsibility, financial performance and shown to have a higher survival rate than those with male-dominated management (World Bank Group, 2019[80]). Yet, in Colombia the 2014 official guidelines for best corporate practices (Corporate Governance Code) do not include requirements for gender diversity on boards. A study on 300 companies in Colombia, shows that by 2020 24% have set out a committee for gender parity (compared to 31.8% in Peru and 22.3% in Mexico). On average, Latin American companies with a committee for gender parity provide their employees with more flexible work options – including flexible hours (20.4 percentage points more than those without a committee), and opportunities for home-based work (13.4 percentage points more) – as well as childcare services, whether direct, or in the form of financial assistance (21.5 percentage points more) (Aequales, 2020[109]).

International experience provides examples of best practices to promote women representation in private companies. In Germany, the 2015 Act on equal participation of women and men in executive positions in private and public sectors set a 30% gender diversity quota for supervisory boards and required listed and co-determined companies (where workers can vote for representatives on the board) to establish targets for gender equality at the top two levels of management. Israeli state-owned enterprises have a legal target of appropriate representation for both genders on the board of directors – usually 50% unless there is a sound reason why such representation is not achievable. Until reaching the goal, preference shall be given to directors of the under-represented gender. Enterprises that do not comply can be sanctioned.

Further to rule-based approaches that involve sanctions, certification mechanisms that praise and put forward companies that comply with announced objectives and commitments in favour of gender equality can generate positive reputational effects, which act, in turn, as an incentive for other companies to adopt similar practices. As one example, the UNDP runs the Gender Equality Seal Certification Programme in the LAC region, which aims to create certification incentives for private companies that meet commitments towards gender equality (OECD, 2020[39]).

In addition, international experience shows that business associations and networks can play a strong role in supporting women who are in leadership positions to act as role models, and raise awareness of women in leadership (OECD, 2017[42]). At the company level, mentorships programmes or networking spaces for women inside companies can also help strengthening the interest of women to participate in governance and decision-making bodies.

Promote an academic culture that integrates female faculty members and supports them to excel. Particularly in the STEM fields, finding qualified candidates for academic positions starts with creating an inclusive learning environment for all students (Nathan Associates, 2016[104]). To this end, mentoring for junior faculty members and nurturing a culture that promotes work-life balance for all faculty members will help ensuring that women are more satisfied with their careers and have the opportunity to excel. Women who chose to stay in academia are more likely to have opportunities for training and career development, to have support from co-workers or supervisors, and for balancing work and non-work roles than were women who left the profession (Corbett and Hill, 2015[74]).

Continue the efforts to strengthen women’s representation in public leadership. Although the quota system in the Colombian Congress and public entities has provided positive results, more actions remain needed to address women’s persisting under-representation in public leadership, especially at the sub-national level. Changes to the law and policy reform are important to ensure that men and women have equal access to political representation in election practices and public office, in civil service recruitment and promotion, and in human resources management in general within the public sector. Tackling the mind-sets of incumbent male leaders and managers and changing institutional cultures still embedding gender bias in both public and private sectors is also key.

Implement specific targets, monitoring and evaluation systems. Tracking progress in gender balanced leadership and addressing remaining challenges with tangible reforms might require the support of specific targets and the collection of gender-disaggregated data, in both private and public sectors. Measurable objectives are important to evaluate whether goals for women’s representation in different professions and at the leadership level are met. A way of measuring these achievements could be by increasing companies’ participation in the “PAR” Ranking, developed by Aequales (a Colombian company, https://form.aequales.com/en), that aims at measuring gender equality and diversity in private companies, public entities and SMEs in Latin America. To be part of the ranking companies need to request their employees to respond to a virtual, access free and confidential questionnaire. Results from each company are measured to estimate indicators on gender equity and presented in an annual ranking that shows comparable results by firms organised by categories such as size of the organisation, sector, public vs. private, among others. In Australia, the Workplace Gender Equality Act requires non-public sector employers with 100 or more employees to disclose their “Gender Equality Indicators” in annual filings with the Workplace Gender Equality Agency.

Supporting women’s entrepreneurship

As discussed in Chapter 1, women in Colombia are less likely to be entrepreneurs than men. While there is not a significant gap in the proportion of men and women who are own-account workers, the share of those who are employers is about twice as large among men than women. Such a significant difference is reconcilable with the fact that women’s businesses are more likely to be informal and to take the judicial form of natural persons whose businesses are individually owned, rather than having a corporate structure.

Moreover, most women-led businesses take the form of micro or small enterprises (78.2%). In addition to the likelihood of operating in the informal sector, these companies tend to be created out of necessity, rather than building on the opportunity of a regular, possibly growing, income. As a result, many women-led businesses do not develop enough to become an established business that drives to further job creation. In Colombia, of every ten micro enterprises, only three survived after five years; this compared to a survival rate of seven out of ten for large, and five for small and medium enterprises (Dini, 2020[110])

Several interdependent forces stand behind these patterns. As discussed in other parts of this report, women do not have the same opportunities of access to education and training as men have. Additionally, the longer hours that they devote to care and household chores reduce the time that they can spend in income generating activities. Furthermore, the lack of access to financial services – such as, saving accounts and credit loans – significantly limit the ability of women to focus on the design and the development of productive businesses. In 2017, 42.5% of women and 49.4% of men in Colombia had an account at a financial institution or at a mobile-money-service provider; female access to an account is lower than the regional average for Latin America (52%) and for upper-middle income countries (69%) (World Bank, 2023[111]).

Tackling the mix of barriers is key to ensuring that Colombian women can engage in new businesses and subsequently expand their activities. Since 2004 the country has organised its support to micro, small and medium firms through the Sistema Nacional de Apoyo a las Mipymes (National System to Support Micro, Small and Medium Businesses). While this support is not directly targeted to women, as mentioned above, women-led businesses are overrepresented among micro and small firms. The National System support is organised in five main axes (Mincomercio, 2020[112]):

Access to financing. This axis includes support by directly providing credit lines or loan guarantees for micro, small, and medium firms through three main institutions: the National Fund for Financing the Agricultural Sector (FINAGRO), the Bank for Business Development of Colombia (BANCOLDEX) and the National Fund for Guarantees (Fondo Nacional de Garantias).
Innovation. The Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation provides support to micro, small, and medium firms through activities such as: (i) signed agreements with the local representatives of the Colombian Confederation of Chambers of Commerce (Confecámaras) to promote innovation in firms; and (ii) tax benefits to a group of research and innovation projects selected though a competitive call for proposals.
Business development and exports promotion. The main actor of this axis is INNPulsa, a government entrepreneurship and innovation agency, which provides support through activities such as: (i) grants to promote exports among micro business with potential in international markets, through the integration of global value chains, in co-ordination with the national agency for the promotion of exports, ProColombia; (ii) promote business’ cluster formation through the programme iNNovaClúster.
Entrepreneurship promotion. The Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Tourism establishes and monitors policies to ensure an enabling environment for successful businesses by establishing a single national policy to promote entrepreneurship and maintaining international free-trade agreements such as the Pacific Alliance (which integrates the economies of Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru).
Productive and social inclusion. The Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Tourism and INNPulsa maintain programmes to support business owned by victims of the armed conflict. These programmes cover issues such as technical assistance to improve entrepreneurship skills and promoting access to markets and productive assets.

In addition to the National System to Support Micro, Small and Medium Businesses, the Office of the Vice-president of Colombia launched in 2021 the Fund Women Entrepreneur (Fondo Mujer Emprende) (Vicepresidencia Colombia, 2023[113]). Now called Fondo para la Promoción de la Autonomía y el Emprendimiento de la Mujer (Fund for the Autonomy and Entrepreneurship of Women), this Fund provides, through a gender approach, financial and non-financial (training and coaching) support to women entrepreneurs in rural and urban settings in co-ordination with key national actors such as FINAGRO, Rural Development Agency (Agencia de Desarrollo Rural, ADR), INNpulsa, BANCOLDEX and Confecámaras. Support through the Fund is differentiated in three categories: life, opportunity and and scalable. Business classified in the “life” category are informal, small, normally for self-employment that aim at generating daily income for subsistence. “Opportunity” businesses show some level of innovation, with the potential to generate wealth and quality jobs. And “scalable” firms are characterised for their high level of innovation with the potential to generate wealth, quality jobs and export.

The World Bank “doing business” index ranks Colombia as one of the best economies to start a business in the Latin America region (World Bank Group, 2020[114]). The country’s score for this category is 87 compared to 79.6 for the region (the maximum score, representing ideal conditions to start a business is 100). This relatively high score is explained by the absence of minimum capital requirements and, lower than the regional average, time and cost required to start a business. Nevertheless, the index shows space for improvement in the number of procedures to legally start and formally operate a company (7 in comparison with an average of 8.1 in Latin America and 4.9 in OECD’s high-income countries) (World Bank Group, 2020[114]). While common to men and women, the adverse effects of the barrier of complex procedures may be particularly important for women whose time is typically more limited, given existing norms and the dominant division of caring obligations in Colombia.

A further pre-requisite to bolster women’s entrepreneurship is the equal treatment of men and women about the rights on the property and the use of land. While in Colombia, women have the same legal right as men to own, use and make decisions over their land and nonland assets, irrespective of marital status, the armed conflict has shown detrimental effects on women’s access to land, especially in rural areas (OECD, 2019[115]). The armed conflict provoked the displacement of millions of people, which made land claiming and distribution complicated. The Law for Victims and Land Restitution (Ley de Victimas y Restitucion de Tierras, law 1448) of 2011 guarantees the right to land restitution to the victims who have lost their land as a result of the conflict, emphasising the protection of women and other vulnerable groups. International evidence shows that women with secure land and property rights earn 4 times more income and save 35% more than women without access to land and property; their children are 10% less likely to be sick, 33% less likely to be underweight, and twice as likely to complete secondary school (USAID Colombia, 2023[116]).

Policy insights

Strengthen the use of bundled approaches to support women’s entrepreneurship. A growing body of research explores the interplay between finance and women’s entrepreneurship development in contexts of high informality (ILO, 2014[117]; ILO-WED, 2018[118]). These works concur that access to formal saving services – e.g. opening a bank account in a women’s names – can encourage women to put some money aside for business uses, while at the same time withstanding pressures to share the money with relatives. Moreover, they agree that more flexible debt repayment conditions – such as a grace period on loans, for example – help women’s business activities and increase the likelihood of their survival.

Another important conclusion of these works is that reaching a strong level of financial inclusion requires more than just the opportunity to open a banking account and to access loans. This reflects the complex nature of the gender financial divide, which involves the coexistence of many layers of structural and individual barriers. For Colombia, these conclusions highlight the importance of continuing to foster the dissemination of programmes that combine access to financial services with other dimensions of entrepreneurship development, such as markets and business training, for example, alongside financial education and the acquisition of digital skills (Alliance for Financial Inclusion, 2021[119]). The recently launched Fondo Mujer Emprende in Colombia (Fund for Women Entrepreneurship), now labelled Fondo para la Promoción de la Autonomía y el Emprendimiento de la Mujer (Fund for the Autonomy and Entrepreneurship of Women), constitutes a first step in the right direction.

A review of existing programmes to support entrepreneurship in low- and middle-income countries confirms that training can play a powerful role in strengthening individuals’ business competences with positive feedback effects on job creation. However, to be successful training programmes have to meet certain requirements, such as targeting early entrepreneurs, being intensive and offered in combination with financial support (Grimm and Paffhausen, 2015[120]). Work by the OECD also shows that the adoption of gender-sensitive approaches in the design of training programmes is key to broadening access, thus expanding the pool of potentially interested women. These approaches should put especial attention to: (i) adaptability, taking into account women’s schedules and time restrictions for transportation and participation in courses (short courses, online courses and training videos, could be preferable to long training programmes); (ii) content should focus on tasks and techniques that women perceive as their prerogative. For example, in Peru, a research initiative to improve potato farming showed very limited participation of women (less than 15% of all participants) because potato is perceived as a “male” crop; women’s participation peaked to 60% for sessions on planting, harvesting and evaluating potato clones, because these are tasks traditionally associated to female work (FAO, 2011[121]); and, (iii) particularly for women in low-income households, trainings should pay attention to certain day-to-day needs, such as women’s care responsibilities of children and elderly during the time spent in training (OECD, 2019[122]).

Networking and mentoring guidance – via the creation of women’s associations and forums, for example – are also an important catalysts of market information and can greatly facilitate knowledge sharing among peers. Experience from European countries suggests that mentorship between experienced and new entrepreneurs can enhance business skills as well, if the mentor and mentee match well. Using interviews to figure out which mentor to match to which mentee is hence worthwhile. In addition, business accelerators or incubators can also provide opportunities for further training and networking in combination with business, financial and legal advice (OECD/EU, 2017[123]). Such accelerators could be run by the public sector itself or operated by the private or non-profit sector, with potential public funding (OECD/EU, 2017[123]).

Finally, Colombia should continue efforts to simplify the administrative procedures to formally register companies. The number of procedures to start a business have significantly declined since 2004 (20 procedures were needed to start a business in 2004, by 2020 this number was reduced to 7) (World Bank Group, 2023[124]). This pattern should continue by policies such as (i) having government agencies substitute to notaries and municipalities in the registration process in order to limit anti-competitive practices and (ii) creating an online one-stop shop for firm creation.

Boost the impact of land restitutions for victims of the armed conflict by packaging them with support to women’s entrepreneurship. Initiatives to revamp land-titling programmes play an essential role in supporting the entrepreneurial activities of rural women. At the same time, the conclusions of recent work on the impact of land-titling and tenure security programmes on farm investment show that policy makers should take into due account the fact that land titling programmes typically work as a complement – without substituting for – other programmes aimed at fostering women economic empowerment (Navarro-Catañeda et al., 2021[125]). According to the ILO, such complementary programmes should include technical trainings to improve the economic performance of women businesses (ILO, 2016[126]), ranging from improving seeds, for example, to the acquisition of managerial skills, alongside other skills related to identify potential markets. One policy insight that can be drawn for Colombia from this evidence is that land-titling in the country should be complemented with activities under the Productive and Social Inclusion axis of the Sistema Nacional de Apoyo a las Mipymes (National System to Support Micro, Small and Medium Businesses), which implements programmes to support businesses owned by victims of the armed conflict. The creation of networks of school ambassadors could help overcoming the lack of role models that women entrepreneurs from rural communities typically suffer. The Frauen unternehmen initiative in Germany provides a potentially interesting example of how the programme could be organised. The ambassadors are selected by a jury, which increases their prestige. In addition, they generally attend a limited number of events with peers so to keep the required commitment relatively light (OECD/EU, 2017[123]).

Monitor the effects of policies. Systematic review of the wide-ranging effects of entrepreneurship programmes in low- and middle-income countries points to the complexities of evaluating outcomes both in terms of job- and firm-creation (Grimm and Paffhausen, 2015[120]). This reflects the fact that many conditions have to be met before interventions in favour of individual enterprises improve business performance and lead to the decision to create a new business or to hire additional employees. In other words, it likely takes a long chain of intermediate results before policy interventions materialise into a sustainable expansion of employment, which is also linked to improving and increasingly secure working conditions.

It is also important to consider that many of the policy measures implemented do not primarily aim to create employment but rather to improve management practices, to achieve more stable income flows and reduce poverty. For example, the benefits of mentorship and access to role models tend to materialise in changed practices regarding the way existing resources are utilised, without necessarily delivering more jobs (ILO, 2014[117]). Similarly, the evidence available seems to suggest that although finance and training programmes have positive effects on business outcomes such as improved knowledge and practice and sometimes income, wider effects on labour market activities and practices are generally weaker and sometimes insignificant (Grimm and Paffhausen, 2015[120]). These findings highlight that it may be more desirable to seize the effects of interventions on sales, revenues and income levels than to quantify employment outcomes, which may depend by other drivers. The availability of disaggregated indicators by gender might also deserve attention as a mean to portraying possible unintended inequalities of outcomes that may emerge on the way to financial inclusion (Trivelli Ávila and Caballero Calle, 2018[127]).

Fighting violence against women

Women safety plays a key role in women economic empowerment. In all countries, women are victims of violence, not only at home (perpetrated by their current and former partners or other family member) but also in public spaces, public transports, school, universities and at work. Adding to physical and mental suffering, harassment, sexual or physical abuse and rape undermine girls and women educational and economic opportunities, ultimately affecting their participation in the labour market (ILO, 2018[128]). For instance, the victims of domestic violence are less likely to be economically active, and when active, less likely to be productive, a consequence of physical and mental suffering (ECLAC, 2016[129]).

To limit the exposure to violence in public spaces, at school and at work (ECLAC, 2016[129]), many girls and women restrict their movements, which potentially limits their educational and work opportunities, alongside to enjoy life (OCAC, 2020[130]). Violence at work may lead to quit a potentially good job opportunity; if the women choses to stay, she does so at a cost to her well-being (ILO, 2018[128]). A high percentage of girls who have experienced a traumatic episode at school have to change school or leave the educational system altogether (OCAC, 2020[130]).

Colombia has one of the highest rates of intimate partner violence against women in Latin America (Bott et al., 2022[131]; ECLAC, 2022[132]). 32.3% of women between 15 and 49 years of age in the country reported experiencing physical violence from an intimate partner at least once in their life (Bott et al., 2022[131]), compared to estimated averages of 25% for the Latin American region and 27% for the world (WHO, 2023[133]). Reports on sexual violence from an intimate partner in Colombia are also among the highest in the region: The country prevalence is 7.6%, compared to a 6.5% reported in Peru, 6.3% in Mexico and 5.4% in the Dominican Republic; only surpassed by Haiti (11.2%) and Nicaragua (7.8%) (Bott et al., 2022[131]). Outside the home, women are also the main victims of sexual harassment on the streets, in transports and at the workplace. In Bogota, 83.4% of women (14 years or older) have experienced sexual harassment in public spaces, in particular when using the city’s rapid bus system Transmilenio (80.4%), on the streets (79%) and in buses from the Integrated Public Transport System (46.5%) (Veeduria Distrital Bogota, 2022[134]). At the workplace women are also more prone to become victims of sexual harassment by co-workers (42%) and supervisors (26%) but only 9% reported it to authorities (Senado de la Republica Colombia, 2023[135]; ELSA, 2022[136]).

As mentioned in Chapter 1, Colombia registered 182 cases of feminicides in 2020 and although this showed a decline from 2019 (with 229 cases), in 2021 the number increased again to 210. In general, the rate of feminicide per 100 000 women slightly increase from 0.7 in 2019 and 2020 to 0.8 in 2021 (ECLAC, 2022[132]). This trend is similar for feminicides among girls and adolescents, in 2019, 12 of each 100 feminicides were of minors, the rate lowered to 10 for 2020 but increased again to 12 in 2021; most of these deaths were of adolescents between 12 and 17 years of age (DANE, ONU Mujeres and CPEM, 2022[101]). While these statistics already show a problem, official numbers of feminicides are often criticised for underestimating the number of deaths. For example, for 2021 the Observatorio Colombiano de Feminicidios (Colombian Feminicides Observatory) reported 622 feminicides or almost 3 times the official number (Observatorio Colombiano de Feminicidios, 2023[137]). A report from the United Nations Development Programme (PNUD) argues that in countries with armed conflict, such as Colombia, official numbers of feminicides don’t account for women’s forced disappearances that end-up in mass graves; since there is no official categorisation of the reason for death, these are not counted as feminicides (UNDP, 2021[138]). In recent years, mobilisations against feminicides have increased across Latin America, which has the highest rate of feminicides in the world. After the murder of a young Argentine woman, the #Niunamenos collective launched an awareness campaign that resonated throughout the region focusing on violence against women.

Colombia has several laws and accompanying measures against different forms of violence against women. In 2006 and 2008 the country passed laws to sanction harassment at the workplace (law 1010) and sanctions for gender-based violence (law 1257). The law 1719 in 2014 introduced measures to guarantee access to justice for victims of sexual violence, especially in the context of the armed conflict. In 2015 the Law 1761 (known as Ley Rosa Elvira Cely) was approved to incorporate feminicide as a crime, separated from the general concept of aggravated homicide. Several measures to fight violence accompany these laws. For example, in 2016 the country established the National Violence Observatory (Observatorio Nacional de Violencias) managed by the Ministry of Health and Social Protection to generate, collect, analyse and disseminate information on gender-based violence nationwide (Ministry of Health and Social Protection, Colombia, 2023[139]). In addition, as part of a comprehensive approach to gender violence, the Ministry of Health and Social Protection has developed guidelines and protocols for the care of abused girls and women victims of gender violence, for victims of sexual violence, for monitoring gender crimes against women displaced by the armed conflict, and materials for the campaign Nada justifica la violencia contra la mujer (Nothing justifies violence against women) (Ministry of Health and Social Protection, Colombia, 2023[140]).

The NDP 2022-26 includes a commitment to strengthen the fight against gender-based violence and femicide. To this end, it promises to use a broad-ranging approach, from preventive assistance to access to justice, as well as monitoring of outcomes.

Policy insights

Lower barriers restricting access to the justice system by victims of violence and harassment. Victims of violence against women often hesitate to report the crime for fear of high risks re-victimisation amid lengthy procedural requirements. In Colombia, between 2019 and 2021, only 36% of feminicides are followed by a criminal complaint and of them only 20% receive a conviction (UNDP, 2023[141]). The Comisarías de familia (Family Police Stations) are the main entity for the prevention of violence and assistance to victims nationwide. They depend entirely on local governments and, even though there are various protocols prepared by the National Police Department and Ministry of Justice to guide and improve their work, there are reports of a wide variation in the way they function and their capacities to assist victims of gender-based violence (World Bank Group, 2019[80]). A recent qualitative study in 27 districts of Colombia shows that victims of violence seem to have a strong preference for conciliation, lack knowledge of available resources to support them and are influenced by social norms against formal complaints. Authorities also seem to lack knowledge on how to accompany a process involving gender-based violence and of available protection measures and other resources to support victims (UNDP, 2023[141]). Providing training to police and justice officers on how to address violence against women, including best practices on how to interact with the victims, can make the process of reporting these crimes less difficult. For example, in 2019, Mexico launched a police-training Programme that aims to ensure the correct application of procedural protocols in situations of gender violence. Hardly any victim can meet the current six-month deadline for reporting harassment or sexual violence, in particular against minors. Acknowledging the fact that the decision to report can be longer, a time extension seems desirable.

Encourage and guarantee safe complaint processes for victims. At workplaces and in schools, women may be reluctant to report harassment or violence, reflecting the fact the perpetrators are often in a superior hierarchical position, such as that of a teacher or a boss (ILO, 2018[128]). Accordingly, the Colombian Government could consider devoting more efforts to implementing safe complaint mechanisms to facilitate the reporting of these situations at the workplace. International experience on the matter suggests that the policy initiatives to encourage companies to adopt complaint mechanisms can rely on different tools, such as collective agreements, for example, the regulations on Occupational Health and Safety and the employment legislation (Eurofound, 2015[142]). In the Scandinavian countries and the Netherlands, for example, the employers’ obligation to set out procedures or measures to tackle violence and harassment in the workplace is a part of the approach to safeguard employees’ mental and physical health. As such, it pertains to the regulations for improving well-being and health issues at work. Legislation in Belgium and France has introduced a specific duty on the employer to prevent violence and harassment. Ireland advices the employers to introduce a code of conduct in order to show their commitment to tackling abusive behaviour, which is highly relevant in case of a court claim. it is equally important that the regulatory framework encourages the adoption of preventive practices, by setting out principles and guidelines to enable the employers adopting more pro-active initiatives. In compliance with these guidelines, some private employers have workshops and trainings in place to explain the law against sexual abuse at work and to raise awareness about the different manifestations of sexual abuse at work, along with how to report them. The role of social partners can also be important to scale up preventive actions at workplace level drawing from their expertise, including by helping the design of individual support, such as the presence of confidential counsellors.

Educate the youth about different aspects of sexual violence and harassment. Although Colombia has launched awareness campaigns for sexual violence, these campaigns do not target teenagers, even though young women are often victims. One international example is the campaign #MeGustaComoEres (#ILikeHowYouAre) launched by Spain in 2019 to prevent gender violence among young people and targeting teenage girls and boys. Through the promotion of respect, acceptance and autonomy in the couple, the campaign focuses on the main manifestations of gender violence, with the aim of identifying and preventing them. A completely digitally supported campaign, it is disseminated through social networks. Other campaigns target street sexual harassment. In Argentina, the campaign #Cambiáeltrato, which showed a young man explaining to another that his behaviour with women on the street was not appropriate, went viral.

Monitor transport security. The lack of secure transports can lead women to restrict their movements as a way of reducing the exposure to risky behaviours. Such drastic resolutions discourage, in turn, women from participating in labour markets, with the adverse effects on incomes being potentially important for households in remote areas. In Colombia, in 2021 the Ministry of Transport launched the campaign Alto al acoso en el transporte (Stop harassment in public transportation) and worked in the identification of policies to make public transportation safer for women (Ministry of Transport, Colombia, 2023[143]; Ministry of Transport, Colombia and IDB, 2021[144]). But while policies can be designed and monitored based on data produced in cities such as Bogota, this is not the case for other areas in the country. Lack of data acts as a barrier to identify hotspots and assess the effectiveness of policies.

Box 2.3. Summary of policy options for making women’s paid work pay more in Colombia

A range of interdependent policies can reduce the gender gap in labour income, thus leading to strengthen the incentive for women to spend more hours on paid work. The OECD suggests to:

Ensure access to quality education for all

Continue the efforts to reward poor families for their engagement in their children’s education. Recent impact evaluation shows that the programme Familias en Acción has increased the probability of school enrolment in both urban and rural areas. It has also led to a reduction of teenage pregnancy in rural areas and child labour in urban areas, although the potential of the programme to reduce teenage pregnancy could be strengthened by making its renewal conditional to school success. Looking forward, keeping the programme responsive to emerging challenges and changing realities on the ground will be a key to ensure impact. According to some observers the potential benefits of strengthening program’s co-ordination could be high. For example, this could require expanding the program’s co-ordination efforts to better connect beneficiaries with initiatives outside the core goal of the programme, such as those promoted by the Ministry of Labour to foster labour market inclusion.
Communicate the benefits of completing studies. Students from low-income families often are ill-informed about the monetary and social returns of education and the wider range of job opportunities studies can open the door to. Influenced by the perception that education does not affect their future well-being, students may drop out of school prematurely to support the income of their families. In 2021, the Colombian Ministry of Education launched with the support of three Foundations (Santo Domingo, Education above All and Pies Descalzos) the campaign Este cuento es tuyo (This story is yours) to promote school enrolment, retention and completion of all grades in the context of post pandemic schools’ reopening. International experience has proven the potential of communicational campaigns as a rapid way to inform students about the benefits of education at moderate costs. School mentoring and student counselling are also a key to making girls and young women stay in the education system.
Ensure comprehensive sexuality education and information at school and out-of-school. International guidelines from UNESCO points to the importance of Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE) as a curriculum-based process of teaching and learning about the cognitive, emotional, physical, and social aspects of sexuality. Even though it has legal backing, the implementation of CSE has proven challenging in Colombia. The current CSE programme (Programme of Education in Sexuality and Construction of Citizenship, PESCC) is overseen by sub national governments. An evaluation of this programme showed that only about 17% of public schools implemented it mainly due to lack of commitment of key actors who perceive sexual education as irrelevant for the school context. Nevertheless, the evaluation also showed that where correctly implemented the PESCC programme supported a significant increase in access to information on available health and contraception services as well as increased knowledge, better attitudes, and improved sexual practices. In particular, the evaluation identified a significant increase in access to information on available health and contraception services. In 2021 a draft bill aimed at including sexual education as part of official schools’ curriculum was discussed in Congress but encountered opposition and was not approved.
Provide medical and financial support to vulnerable girls and teenage mothers. Considering that teen pregnancy is more prevalent among girls that are less educated than their peers, the government should ensure that medical and financial support to vulnerable girls and teenage mothers is available. An experience to build upon is the programme implemented by the Instituto Colombiano de Bienestar Familiar (Colombian Institute of Family Welfare) that provides psychological support, referrals to relevant health and education services, along with temporary housing to vulnerable girls over 18 who are pregnant or lactating and without family support. International experience shows the potential of this type of interventions. In Uruguay a programme aims at promoting educational projects for mothers under the age of 23. In Australia, the government has created several transfer programmes for teenage parents, including the JET Childcare Fee Assistance subsidy, for example, which allows young mothers and partners paying for the care of the children during work or school times. These programmes underscore the importance of targeting, especially with a view to reaching out to rural and remote areas.

Promote women in non-traditional careers and leadership positions

Create targets for women’s representation in private companies. In Colombia, female share of seats on boards of the largest publicly listed companies in 2021 is 12.9%, below the OECD average of 28%, but higher than the latest estimate for Latin America of 10.4%. A study on 300 companies in Colombia, shows that by 2020 24% have set out a committee for gender parity (compared to 31.8% in Peru and 22.3% in Mexico). International experience provides examples of best practices to promote women representation in private companies. In Germany, the 2015 Act on equal participation of women and men in executive positions in private and public sectors set a 30% gender diversity quota for supervisory boards and required listed and co-determined companies (where workers can vote for representatives on the board) to establish targets for gender equality at the top two levels of management. Israeli state-owned enterprises have a legal target of appropriate representation for both genders on the board of directors – usually 50% unless there is a sound reason why such representation are not achievable. Until reaching the goal, preference shall be given to directors of the under-represented gender. Enterprises that do not comply can be sanctioned.
Promote an academic culture that integrates female faculty members and supports them to excel. Particularly in the STEM fields, finding qualified candidates for academic positions starts with creating an inclusive learning environment for all students. To this end, mentoring for junior faculty members and nurturing a culture that promotes work-life balance for all faculty members will help ensuring that women are more satisfied with their careers and have the opportunity to excel. Women who chose to stay in academia are more likely to have opportunities for training and career development, to have support from co-workers or supervisors, and for balancing work and non-work roles than were women who left the profession.
Continue the efforts to strengthen women’s representation in public leadership. Although the quota system in the Colombian Congress and public entities has provided positive results, more actions remain needed to address women’s persisting under-representation in public leadership, especially at the sub-national level. Changes to the law and policy reform are important to ensure that men and women have equal access to political representation in election practices and public office, in civil service recruitment and promotion, and in human resources management in general within the public sector. Tackling the mind-sets of incumbent male leaders and managers and changing institutional cultures still embedding gender bias in both public and private sectors is also key.
Implement specific targets to support monitoring and evaluation. Tracking progress in gender balanced leadership and addressing remaining challenges with tangible reforms might require the support of specific targets and the collection of gender-disaggregated data, in both private and public sectors. Measurable objectives are important to evaluate whether goals for women’s representation in different professions and at the leadership level are met. A way of measuring these achievements could be by increasing companies’ participation in the “PAR” Ranking, that aims at measuring gender equality and diversity in private companies, public entities and SMEs in Latin America.

Support women’s entrepreneurship

Promote the use of bundled approaches to strengthen women’s entrepreneurship. Given the importance of the interplay between different layers of barriers to entrepreneurship, the OECD report puts forward the view that strengthening women’s entrepreneurship could require the use of bundled approaches. For Colombia this means that more opportunities of access to formal saving services – e.g. opening a bank account in a women’s names – and to more flexible debt repayment conditions – like a grace period on loans, for example – could combine with other non-financial measures, such as markets and business training, for example, alongside financial education and the acquisition of digital skills. At the same time, Colombia should continue efforts to simplify the administrative procedures to formally register companies. The transformation of the Fondo Mujer Emprende (Fund for Women Entrepreneurship) into the Fondo para la Promoción de la Autonomía y el Emprendimiento de la Mujer (Fund for the Autonomy and Entrepreneurship of Women), with permanence and legal status, constitutes a step in the right direction.
Boost the impact of land restitutions for victims of the armed conflict by packaging them with support to women’s entrepreneurship. Initiatives to revamp land-titling programmes play an essential role in supporting the entrepreneurial activities of rural women. At the same time, the conclusions of recent work on the impact of land-titling programmes on farm investment suggest that policy makers should be wary of overemphasising the impact of tenure security on agrarian investment. This is because land titling programmes typically work as a complement – without substituting for – other programmes aimed at fostering women economic empowerment. According to the ILO, such complementary programmes should include technical trainings to improve the economic performance of women businesses, ranging from improving seeds, for example, to the acquisition of managerial skills, alongside other skills related to identify potential markets. The creation of networks of school ambassadors could help overcoming the lack of role models that women entrepreneurs from rural communities typically suffer.
Monitor the effects of policies. Recent empirical analysis points to the fact that it typically takes a fairly long chain of intermediate results before policy interventions to support entrepreneurship create a sustainable expansion of employment. This suggests that in its policy thinking about how to monitor the effects of interventions it might be more desirable for Colombia to seize the impact on sales, revenues and income levels than to quantify employment outcomes. The availability of disaggregated indicators by sex deserves significant attention to portray possible unintended inequalities of outcomes that may emerge on the way to financial inclusion.

Fight violence against women

Lower barriers restricting access to the justice system by victims of violence and harassment. Victims of violence against women often hesitate to report the crime for fear of high risks re-victimisation amid lengthy procedural requirements. In Colombia, between 2019 and 2021, only 36% of feminicides were followed by a criminal complaint and of them only 20% receive a conviction. The Comisarías de familia (Family Police Stations) are the main entity for the prevention of violence and assistance to victims nationwide. They depend entirely on local governments and, even though there are various protocols prepared by the National Police Department and Ministry of Justice to guide and improve their work, there are reports of a wide variation in the way they function and their capacities to assist victims of gender-based violence. A progress in this direction is the creation of the Sistema Nacional de Registro, Atención, Seguimiento y Monitoreo de las Violencias Basadas en Género (National System for the Registration, Attention, Follow-up and Monitoring of Gender-Based Violence), which aims to centralise the information on individual cases of GBV.
Encourage and guarantee safe complaint processes for victims. At workplaces and in schools, women may be reluctant to report harassment or violence, reflecting the fact the perpetrators are often in a superior hierarchical position, such as that of a teacher or a boss. Accordingly, the Colombian Government could consider devoting more efforts to implementing safe complaint mechanisms to facilitate the reporting of these situations at the workplace. International experience on the matter suggests that the policy initiatives to encourage companies to adopt complaint mechanisms can rely on different tools, such as collective agreements, for example, the regulations on Occupational Health and Safety and the employment legislation.
Educate the youth about different aspects of sexual violence and harassment. Although Colombia has launched awareness campaigns for sexual violence such as Nada justifica la violencia contra la mujer (Nothing justifies violence against women), these campaigns do not target teenagers, despite the fact that young women are often victims. One international example is the campaign #MeGustaComoEres (#ILikeHowYouAre) launched by Spain in 2019 to prevent gender violence among young people and targeting teenage girls and boys. Through the promotion of respect, acceptance and autonomy in the couple, the campaign focuses on the main manifestations of gender violence, with the aim of identifying and preventing them. A completely digitally supported campaign, it is disseminated through social networks.
Monitor transport security. In Bogota, 80.4% of women (14 years or older) have experienced sexual harassment when using the city’s rapid bus system Transmilenio. The lack of secure transports can lead women to restrict their movements as a way of reducing the exposure to risky behaviours. Such drastic resolutions discourage, in turn, women from participating in labour markets, with the adverse effects on incomes being potentially important for households in remote areas. In Colombia, in 2021 the Ministry of Transport launched the campaign Alto al acoso en el transporte (Stop harassment in public transportation) and worked in the identification of policies to make public transportation safer for women. But while policies can be designed and monitored based on data produced in cities such as Bogota, this is not the case for other areas in the country. Lack of data acts as a barrier to identify hotspots and assess the effectiveness of policies.

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