Competitiveness and Gender Equality in Latin America.

While studying and gathering valuable information for my public policy paper I came acrross a great paper by Karen Poniachik, Visiting Fellow of the Center for Hemispheric Policy of the University of Miami which shows the state of gender equality in Chile.

Karen states that Chile scores very low in “female participation in labor force,” in The Global Competitiveness Report although in mostly every other index it shows remarkable results.

I suggest you download and read the report complete but here’s one of the most interesting parts of it. It refers to the changes that in only 4 years former President Bachelet developed in the southern country.

“A key aspect of President Bachelet’s social protection system was to increase access to day care and pre-school education for the children of working mothers. In 2005, publicly-funded nurseries offered 14,400 places for boys and girls of up to two years of age. By March 2010, they exceeded 84,000. Coverage of nursery schools for two- to four-year olds also increased significantly, rising from less than 100,000 places in 2005 to 140,000 in 2010. At the same time, through a number of state-funded training and employment programs, huge efforts were made to improve the employability and working conditions of 30,000 vulnerable female heads of household throughout the country.”

The complete report in PDF format can be download here