**_Female unemployment rates are above those of males in all countries in Latin America_** This reflects a world-wide trend which the US and European literature suggests is due to women’s role as secondary earner in the household that permits for longer spells of unemployment, the difficulty in finding employment that allows for the competing demands on women’s time, and women’s frequent entry and exit from the labor force, resulting in more frequent unemployment spells and their lower attachment to it, leading to longer search periods (Blau and Ferber, 1992).

While women participate less in the labor market than men, their labor in the household far exceeds that of men. Homecare is more than a full time job for women who do not work outside the household (49 hours weekly among married Mexican women, for example) while it is a substantial part time job for those who do (33 hours weekly). Men, on the other hand, spend approximately 5 hours weekly in housework, regardless of own, or spouse’s employment status (Cunningham and Jacobsen 2004).

**_Women are  disproportionately informal._** While women generally make up approximately onethird of the LAC labor force, they account for approximately half of all informal wage jobs, are over-represented in the self employment sector and are underrepresented in the formal sector (Cunningham 2001).  Further, Markov transition matrices suggest women have exaggerated rates of transition between self employment and being out of the labor force (Bosch and Maloney 2004).

**_But this seems largely a result of balancing home and work responsibilities_** :  A body of sociological work (Geldstein  2000, Chant 1991, Gonzalez de Rocha 1994), supported by survey data shows that women have a higher preference for unstructured work environments and shifts than men.  Women disproportionately cite “the need to care for the household” as their reason for being self employed, contract workers, or informal wage earners; where the flexible work shifts and work locations allow them to more easily fulfill their gender roles as primary caregivers of the households (Cunningham and Gomez 2004). Further, informal work also permits the easy and relatively frequent entry and exit from the labor market, which is characteristic of women’s labor histories. Partly due to household responsibilities, partly due to their role as safety nets when the household experiences a negative income shock (Cunningham 2001, World Bank 2001), female turnover is much higher than men’s.

This view of largely home responsibility-induced informality is borne out when the patterns of single and married women are broken out. Unmarried women without children, who have few domestic responsibilities are even more represented in the formal sector than are men while married women are over-represented in the unpaid labor sector.<sup>40</sup> Men’s sector of employment does not differ by marital or parental status suggesting the importance of child care responsibilities (Cunningham 2001). Further, single, childless women’s transition matrices are statistically indistinguishable from those of men. This said, employers also know female turnover patterns, and may discriminate for statistical reasons against young women in filling formal jobs. In some countries (eg., Bolivia), labor regulations still contain provisions such as a shorter work week, prohibition of night work, weak regulations of domestic work and maternity benefits paid by employers and non-transferable to husbands, all of which hinder better quality employment for women.

**_Occupational segregation by gender remains a defining characteristics of Latin American labor markets._** The Duncan index (proportion of men and women who would have to trade occupations to

> 40 In Mexico, for example, 10 percent of married women are unpaid workers while 87 percent of unmarried women are formal sector employees.

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