6 facts to understand the gender gap in the Colombian labor market

Although women outperform men in obtaining higher education degrees in most areas of knowledge, significant gaps persist in their participation in the labor market, their employment rate and opportunities to access formal and well-paid jobs.
This panorama shows a disconnect between women’s educational progress and the working conditions they face, which poses challenges for achieving true gender equity in the workplace.
Six indicators reinforce the idea that women have not yet managed to break down the structural barriers to their insertion in the labor market, an indispensable condition for guaranteeing their economic autonomy and closing the existing gender gap.
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Gender gap in the Colombian labor market
1. Persistent Gender Gap in Labor Participation
According to figures for the first 9 months of the year, in 2024, the overall labor participation rate (GPR) decreased by 0.3 percentage points for both women and men compared to 2023. The female GPR went from 52.6% to 52.3%, while the male GPR dropped from 76.7% to 76.4%.
In addition to this slight overall decline, a gap of more than 24 percentage points persists between men and women, reflecting the structural barriers that limit female participation in the economy.

2. Employment rate: structural inequality
The employment gap between men and women remained high at approximately 24.4 percentage points. This difference reflects the persistent structural inequalities in the Colombian labor market, particularly in access to formal and stable employment for women, who also face greater barriers associated with informality and labor discrimination.
The employment rate for men went from 70.3% in the first 9 months of 2023 to 69.8% in the same period of 2024. For women, the employment rate went from 45.7% in 2023 to 45.4% in 2024.
3. Highly feminized economic activities are slow to recover
Trade activities (19%), public administration, security, health and education (18.1%), arts, entertainment, recreation and sports activities (14.1%), accommodation and food services (11.7%) and manufacturing industries (11%) are the activities that concentrate employment generation in the Colombian economy.
The poor performance of manufacturing and commerce activities has been compensated by the reactivation of artistic and entertainment activities and the performance of the public sector. However, this panorama reveals a worrying trend towards labor precariousness.
While artistic, entertainment or tourism activities tend to generate temporary or informal jobs, the growth of employment in the public sector does not manage to absorb the entire labor force or compensate for the weakness in key sectors such as manufacturing and commerce.
These dynamics of the Colombian labor market underscore the need for policies that promote the strengthening of the productive sector and the generation of formal and quality employment, prioritizing reindustrialization and the promotion of economic activities with greater value added and labor absorption capacity.

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4. Unemployment
In the first nine months of 2024, the unemployment rate for men rose to 8.6%, compared to 8.3% in the same period of 2023. For women, unemployment reached 13.3%, up slightly from 13.2% in the same period of the previous year.
These data show a moderate increase in unemployment for both genders, with a significant gap of 4.7 percentage points, reflecting women’s greater difficulties in accessing the labor market. This increase, although slight, highlights the fragility of the economic recovery and the insufficiency of measures to address inequalities in employment.
5. Kinship
The employment rate of female-headed households by sex has progressed positively for women. Between 2007 and 2024, the participation of employed women in the headship of Colombian households increased from 29.3% to 44.5%.
This progress reflects a significant change in the structure of Colombian households and in the economic role of women, who have assumed greater responsibility as the main providers. This 15.2 percentage point increase highlights the impact of factors such as increased female participation in the labor market, changes in family dynamics, and progress in the social perception of women as economic leaders of the household.
However, this progress also poses significant challenges, as many female heads of household face precarious working conditions, such as informality, low pay and lack of access to social benefits. In addition, they often have a double burden of responsibilities as they combine paid work with domestic and care work.

6. Women graduate more, but find fewer jobs
In the last two decades, women have accounted for 55.6% of all higher education graduates in Colombia, compared to 44.4% of men. However, despite this progress, women continue to face greater difficulties in excelling in the labor market.
35.2% of the degrees were awarded in the area of economics, administration, accounting and related fields; 22.8% in engineering, architecture, urban planning and related fields; 17.97% in social and human sciences; 9.89% in educational sciences; and 7.34% in health sciences.
In six of the eight areas of knowledge classified by the Ministry of Education, women obtain more degrees than men. However, some areas continue to be predominantly male, such as engineering, architecture and urban planning, where men represent 65% of graduates, and agronomy, veterinary science and related fields, with 54.6% of men in the total number of degrees awarded.
In contrast, women make up 71% of graduates in health sciences, an area that represents 9.4% of the degrees awarded to women in the last two decades. In addition, 66% of graduates in education sciences have been women, and in economics, administration and related fields, women represent 63% of the degrees awarded.
In areas such as social and human sciences, women account for 56.5% of graduates, and in fine arts and mathematics and natural sciences, they exceed 50% of graduates.
Despite the notable increase in female participation in higher education, the total number of graduates has experienced a decrease in 2023, with 534,942 graduates, a slight drop from the previous year’s 535,963, after a steady increase between 2021 and 2022. This decline, the first since 2001, excluding 2020, reflects the long-term effects of the pandemic on the education system.
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