Latin American governments need to expand gender-sensitive career orientation and guidance
Source: OECD
Occupational segregation and the underrepresentation of women in STEM-related fields across Latin America are harmful to women, the private sector, and the region’s economies. Causes for this occupational segregation emerge from a young age, due to gender stereotypes portrayed at home and in schools, and the lack of proper information about the potentials of STEM and other male-dominated industries. Latin American countries need to make concerted efforts to institutionalize career orientation and guidance in schools to help students learn about different career options and experience them firsthand, incl. in STEM. In doing so, they must ensure that these activities are gender-sensitive to break down existing stereotypes.
By Chloë Haynes and Kevin Hempel | October 2024
The authors would like to thank Paula Coto (Chicas en Tecnología), Isabella Cuneo, Alessandro Gallardo, Soledad Cruz (all Ocides Foundation), Alessandro Bello (Technopolis, previously UNESCO), and Abhilasha Sahay (World Bank) for providing valuable insights on this topic.
Occupational segregation is harmful for individuals and societies
The gender gap in educational attainment has fallen rapidly all over the world, and Latin America is no exception. For instance, girls surpass boys in tertiary enrollment in all Latin America and Caribbean (LAC) countries. Unfortunately, gains in education do not always translate into better employment outcomes for women to the extent that it does for their male counterparts. In 2023, the labor force participation rate for women in LAC was just 51%, compared to 75% for men. While this is higher than in other regions, women in LAC typically hold lower quality jobs than their male counterparts.
This pattern is due in part to gendered occupational segregation that starts in childhood and continues throughout a person’s working life. This occupational segregation means that men tend to be concentrated in traditionally male-dominated fields such as engineering, manufacturing, and construction, while women are concentrated in business, education, and health care. For instance, only 4 out of 10 STEM graduates in the region are women, and this number drops to approximately 1 in 3 employees with STEM degrees being female. STEM-related and other male-dominated jobs are typically higher-paid and higher-status, which perpetuates both the gendered wage gap and gender stereotypes. Apart from limiting women’s employment and earning potential, gendered occupational segregation is harmful to the region’s firms and economies because excluding women from male-dominated fields is an inefficient use of the available talent pool.
What drives occupational segregation during adolescence?
To simplify, we can think of two key stages contributing to occupational segregation: 1) The childhood and youth years, which influence aspirations as well as educational and occupational choices; and 2) Adulthood and on-the-job experiences, influencing job retention and career progression in specific fields. In this articule we will only focus on the first stage.
Gender roles and stereotypes at home
Gender roles are adopted in the household from a young age. In Latin America (as in many other parts of the world), girls are more likely to do domestic chores or care for siblings, while boys are more likely to work for pay. This gender gap in household work increases with age, perpetuating the idea that women and girls should work primarily inside the home while men and boys should work outside the home. Parents also show a gender bias when it comes to their children’s choice of study that mirrors traditional gender roles. For example, in Mexico, parents are more likely to expect their son to pursue a STEM career than their daughter, even when boys and girls perform similarly in school.
Gender roles and stereotypes at school
While schools can play a role in breaking down gender stereotypes, in practice they may often reinforce them. For instance, “cultural codes” in STEM and vocational trainings enforce traditional gender roles and act as a barrier for women and girls entering these fields. Many existing educational materials rely on gender stereotypes, which dissuade women from participating. For example, a science textbook might only show pictures of men in the laboratory or as engineers.
Moreover, educators can reinforce stereotypes. Teachers’ perceptions of gendered skills can create an uneven classroom environment and lead to stereotyped assessments. For instance, girls are often told to “not worry” about math and science because it is “too hard” for them. Female students then internalize the negative gender-based stereotypes of their educators in math and science classes. As a result, beliefs about which school subjects boys are better at compared to girls tend to manifest themselves in reality. For example, boys tend to perform better in math (and, to a lesser degree, science) in school, while girls perform better in reading. This can deter girls from pursuing STEM fields, as girls may feel like STEM careers are masculine or that they are not equal in abilities to boys. A lack of sufficient female role models in STEM (incl. teachers) perpetuates these stereotypes.
As a result, even among top performers in science or mathematics, girls across the globe are less likely to anticipate working as science and engineering professionals than boys, instead expecting to work in health or teaching professions. Research from Peru also shows that experiencing gender stereotypes in the classroom negatively affects labor market outcomes later in life.
Lack of information and guidance about the potentials of STEM studies and other male-dominated fields
The information (or lack thereof) young people receive feeds their choices regarding further education and employment. An important channel (other than the family) to provide this information is through career orientation and guidance in schools. This includes, for example, improving young people’s understanding of the nature of work in different fields (incl. STEM), potential employers, earning and career advancement opportunities, as well as concrete options to pursue higher education in certain areas. However, career guidance at the secondary level in Latin America is often insufficient. For instance, 1 out of 3 of schools in Argentina and Brazil do not offer any career guidance. When it is available, it is often voluntary and not scheduled into the curriculum. Moreover, girls are less likely to participate in career orientation and guidance than boys. For instance, among the Latin American countries for which data are available, girls are less likely to report having spoken to a career advisor, participated in a job fair, participated in job shadowing or workplace visits, or done an internship by the age of 15.
What Latin American countries can do to strengthen career orientation and guidance
Fighting occupational segregation and promoting young women’s participation in STEM requires interventions at different levels and different stages of the educational and professional journey. Governments across the region have started implementing some of these interventions, often with the support of international development partners such as the World Bank. However, to address young people’s lack of information and guidance, more needs to be done to strengthen career orientation and guidance in the region.
Expanding career guidance and making it an integral part of formal education is an effective way to shape students’ career aspirations, including related to STEM careers. This can be particularly effective for girls if done in a manner that challenges societal gendered expectations. For instance, the Ministry of Women and Gender Equity in Chile has initiated the program Más Mujeres Más Ciencia, which encourages young women to choose careers in science-related fields. Since occupational aspirations are formed at a young age, career guidance activities should as well, by offering career talks, workplace visits, job shadowing, internships, mentoring, and the like. These activities help young people expand their horizon, learn about different options, as well as see and experience them first-hand.
Career orientation is particularly powerful when it increases the visibility of female role models in STEM and other male-dominated fields. The presence of role models is vitally important in encouraging participation in any field. If a girl grows up seeing only men as engineers or doctors, she may think these roles are closed off to her. Introducing young girls to successful women in STEM fields will show them that they too can succeed in these fields. For example, research in France showed that exposure to a female role mode in Grade 12 significantly increased the probability of girls to enroll in a STEM track in higher education, while a study in Peru found that exposure to mentorship increased the preference for engineering programs among high performing female students. Role model interventions can take different shapes. For example, in Chile, “ingeneous weeks” expose students to science topics through a range of activities, while mentoring programs connect female university students in STEM with girls in primary and secondary school, inspiring them to take an active interest in science and technology. In Uruguay, female teachers from the Institutes of Computing and Electrical Engineering at the University of the Republic organized workshops on robotics, circuits, and geographic software for high school girls to promote interest in these careers and provide them with opportunities to connect with women who have been successful in these fields.
Civil society organizations can play an important role, both inside and outside the school system. Given limited resources, many schools may be constrained in delivering career orientation and guidance activities on their own. Partnerships with civil society organizations can bridge this gap. For instance, the organization Chicas en Tecnología offers a variety of programs in Argentina and across the region targeted at different age groups to foster girls’ interests, skills and networks in technology, through both online and hybrid programs. Similarly, Ingeniosas Foundation works in Chile, Argentina and other countries in the region to bring the world of science, technology, engineering, art and mathematics closer to girls and young women “so that they look at science and technology with new eyes”.
Involve families and boys in the discussion. Parents act as “gatekeepers” for education and career decisions of their children. Therefore, it is vital to include them in discussions and activities around career orientation to influence their attitudes and create an enabling environment for young women to pursue STEM and other male-dominated fields. For instance, this can be done by sharing relevant information with parents and inviting them to participate in selected career-orientation workshops or seminars. Similarly, engaging boys and girls in classroom discussions around gender equality could make attitudes more supportive of gender-neutral educational and career trajectories.
Why are Latin American countries not doing more to address occupational choices?
According to existing research and several experts in the region, there appears to be a divide among Latin American countries, with significant heterogeneity in terms of how much emphasis is placed on fighting occupational segregation and getting more women into STEM-related fields.
On the one hand, countries such as Chile, Argentina, and Costa Rica appear to be leading the agenda. This has to do with the structure of their economies and demand for STEM skills in the private sector, as well as a supportive policy environment for gender equality, and an increasing push for diversity, equity and inclusion in the private sector. These countries have put in place national gender equality plans and/or sectoral plans on the promotion of ICT with a strong gender focus. For instance, Costa Rica’s Plan Nacional de Ciencia, Tecnología e Innovación (2022-2027) includes a specific goal to increase the number of STEM graduates through public intervention.
However, for many other countries of the region, addressing occupational segregation is less of a priority. They often have first-order concerns related to enrolling and keeping girls in school, rather than with what subject they study later. In countries where the economy is more dependent on agriculture and a relatively smaller private sector seeking a diverse talent pool of highly educated STEM graduates, there may be limited incentives to reduce gender gaps in these fields. In many Latin American countries there is also a legacy of paying particular attention to socioeconomic inequalities, which in turn may take precedence over concerns about gender gaps. Moreover, during the COVID-19 pandemic, government attention was focused mainly on addressing basic priorities related to keeping learning afloat and making up instruction time lost due to school closures. Finally, limited resources for public education may simply force governments to focus on teaching foundational skills at the expense of what might be considered “nice to have” initiatives on career orientation or closing gender gaps in occupational choice.
Way forward
In an increasingly fast-changing world, having access to quality career orientation and guidance is essential for young people. Career orientation and guidance is also a key ingredient to overcoming information gaps and gender stereotypes that prevent young women in accessing STEM-related careers. However, in many countries of the region, career orientation and guidance are not yet strongly institutionalized in the school system, and where they exist, girls tend to participate less in these activities.
Therefore, future efforts in strengthening Latin America’s education systems should place stronger emphasis on institutionalizing career guidance initiatives from an early age – no later than lower secondary school. Providing career orientation and guidance does not always require significant resources. Schools can start with implementing intentional “light-touch” interventions, such as inviting guest speakers or organizing small class trips to expose students to a range of different career opportunities, while leveraging (female) role models and dismantling gendered stereotypes. Governments can also work with civil society organizations who actively promote career orientation in general and/or specifically for girls, either through partnerships with schools or via other channels (e.g., after-school programs, clubs, etc.).
As new efforts are being implemented, it is important to generate more evidence on which interventions are most effective. Existing evidence on career orientation and guidance stems largely from high-income countries. Broadening this evidence base with robust research from Latin American countries will be helpful to unlock future investments from governments across the region.
Note: To access other useful resources on teenage career guidance, including evidence and good practices, check out the OECD’s Career Readiness project.
About the authors:
Chloë Haynes is a Program Associate at Pan American Development Foundation. She conducted this research during her time working as a Research Analyst with Prospera Consulting while studying at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). You can follow her on LinkedIn.
Kevin Hempel is the Founder and Managing Director of Prospera Consulting, a boutique consulting firm working towards stronger policies and programs to facilitate the labor market integration of disadvantaged groups. You can follow him on LinkedIn and Twitter.