Education and Future Well Being of Latin American Adolescents

Latin America has shown great progress in average education attainments during the past few decades. An increased participation of women in the education system occurred together with this education expansion. On average and in most countries, there are more girls attending school at all educational levels than boys. Women’s participation in post secondary education is also higher than men’s.

In spite of this regional panorama favorable for women, there still are educational challenges to be confronted. This higher education level achieved by women is not being reflected later in their labor market insertion. Young women have a lower labor participation rate than men, higher unemployment levels, and a labor insertion in less protected sectors (with higher levels of informality, less productive, and with worse income trajectories).

Although this paradox is probably associated with labor markets’ historic discrimination factors, this paper seeks to identify elements from the education system that help to explain this fact. It concludes that although access barriers to the education system have been overcome by women, there is still a lot to be done in relation to the mechanisms that perpetuate the traditional socialization forms. That is, the process by which unequal and discriminatory gender stereotypes are still formed within the teaching-learning process, interfering with the prospects of equal labor opportunities. The paper also takes into account the gender differences within the reasons for aborting school early and how that impacts the design of appropriate social policies.