World Bank report identifies difficulties and challenges women face in the job market
The Law, Gender and Identity Research Group (GDPG) of FGV’s Sao Paulo Law School (Direito SP) welcomed World Bank gender expert and lawyer Paula Tavares on May 18. Tavares presented and discussed the results of the research “Women, Business and The Law 2018”, developed by the World Bank, which examines the legal and regulatory framework affecting women’s entrepreneurship and economic capacity.
The report listed the findings of an in-depth study covering 189 countries. In Brazil, despite accounting for more than half of the population, women represent 43% of the workforce and hold only 37.8% of the managerial positions; regarding political representation, women account for only 10.5% of the politicians. Despite being better qualified than men, women are paid 25% less.
Ligia Paula Pires Pinto Sica, Coordinator of the GDPG, pointed out that women’s underrepresentation worsens as you climb the senior management ladder in companies. She mentions a research coordinated at Direito SP, which concluded that the percentage of women in leadership positions in companies varied between 7% and 12% in the last 20 years, including senior management, presidency or board positions. Tavares mentioned another GPDG research corroborating data also brought by the World Bank.
“Paternity and maternity leave policies have a significant influence on the cost generated by pregnancy. For instance, Portugal, France, Iceland and Japan have far more progressive laws than Brazil regarding this issue”.
The same applies to politics, according to Luciana de Oliveira Ramos, from the Coordination of Applied Research of Direito SP, with a doctoral thesis on female representation in politics. Brazil has a quota law for candidacy, but ranks 152nd among 193 countries, which is much worse than in many nations considered backward when it comes to women’s rights, which is troublesome.
According to the researchers, we need consistent state intervention, adopting public policies that encourage the insertion and better qualification of women in all environments.
Regarding this topic, the Gender Policies 3 credit program for students in FGV courses will be announced this week, coordinated by Sica as a project to broaden student awareness of the inequality of opportunities between genders and propose how to address it through public and private policies.
