The Gender of Work is the result of a joint initiative between CIPPEC, the International Labor Organization, UN Women and the United Nations Development Program. It focuses on diagnosing the gender gaps that violate the economic rights of women in Argentina, and to present policy suggestions for removing the obstacles that make it impossible for women’s trajectories in the labor market to be substantively equal to those of men.

In the Latin American context specifically (but not exclusively), there are three key issues that public policies should take into account when attempting to close the gender gaps in the exercise of economic autonomy. These can be summarized as (1) a human-rights perspective on substantive gender equality, that connects it with sustainable development priorities as described in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and approved by the United Nations in 2015; (2) the acknowledgement of intersectionality and interculturality when tackling discriminative societal structures and (3) the principle of integrality as fundamental to the achievement of physical, decision-making, and economic autonomy.

In order to achieve this purpose in consideration of these three main issues, the book and, consequently, this executive summary, are organized as follows. The first section makes a conceptual introduction to the problem of women’s economic autonomy. It includes both definitions and arguments for action. The second section identifies the main gender gaps in the Argentine labor market, which can be classified in three main categories: (1) access to the labor market, (2) quality of employment and work trajectories, and (3) access to leadership positions. The section closes with an analysis of the three main causes behind the gender gaps, mainly, care and unpaid domestic work, gender norms and education. Next, the third section analyses the role of the Argentine State, both at the institutional and at the policy level. Finally, the fourth section summarizes lessons and recommendations to close gender gaps, and it reflects about possible ways forward.

You can find the complete book for download (in Spanish), at cippec.org/egdt