Women face delays in employment, what does Panama propose?

Panama approved and published in official newspapers he Institutional plan for gender equality 2022-2025 promote labor equality and achieve the most efficient functioning of the labor market.

The document offers an institutional plan for the implementation of concrete and effective actions, both within Ministry of Labor and Labor Development (Mitradel) cas well as in the services it provides to people, companies and organizations.

By implementing this plan, Mithradel seeks measurable results in promoting equality between women and men, especially in groups in greater conditions of vulnerability, such as Afro-descendant and indigenous women and young women.

This plan also has a matrix that has nine defined outcomes, which derive from the conclusions Institutional diagnosis of labor equality. These include: improvements in employment equality legislation and the knowledge of Mitradel staff; effectiveness in individual and collective conciliation processes to resolve violations of women’s labor rights; reduce gender and ethnic/racial disparities in access to employment programs; monitoring and verification of violations of women’s labor rights; promote labor equity and gender mainstreaming, among others.

In August 2019, the index of unemployment in Panama it was 7.1%, which when separated by gender reflects 5.8% for men and 8.8% for women. This index rose to 18.5% in September 2020, where men represented 13.6% and women 24.7%, which confirms what was happening in other countries in the region.

In October 2021, INEC announced that Unemployment rate fell as a result of gradual economic reactivation and amounted to 11.3%, which corresponds to 11.0% for men and 11.8% for women.

At the end of 2021, International Labor Organization (ILO) announced that he the unemployment rate in Latin America and the Caribbean, it was 10%, with men making up 8.3% and women 12.4%.

In April 2022, INEC conducted Multipurpose Research (EPM), which found an unemployment rate of 9.9%, corresponding to 8.8% for men and 11.3% for women.

Women and informal work in Panama
Analyzing informality by gender, statistical data show that in 2019 there were a total of 392,025 men, and in 2022 there were 430,904; that is, 38,879 new informal men.

As for women, there were a total of 324,088 in 2019 and 307,018 in 2022, reflecting a decrease of 17,070 fewer women in the informal sector; that is, it decreased by 5.2%.

Regarding the percentage variation of total informal employment and by gender from the same years 2019 to 2022, an increase in the total rate of informal employment is observed from 44.9% in 2019, 47.6% in 2021 and 48.2% in 2022. year.

The sum of the three years shows a greater increase in the rate of the male sex, which varied from 44.5% in 2019 to 50.3% in 2022; while the rate of women remained at 45.4%,9 during that period, as the report states: “Inclusion of young people and women in the labor force in Panama”, Ministry of Labor and Labor Development (Mitradel).