• Working children and gender

Working children and gender

This study examines the child labour phenomenon in the Latin America and Caribbean (LAC) region from a gender perspective. It represents part of a broader effort to improve understanding of how child labour differs by sex, and to ensure that policies relating to child labour adequately reflect these differences.

Using information from SIMPOC and LSMS survey datasets from 12 LAC countries, the study looks at differences by sex in key dimensions of the child labour phenomenon – its extent, nature, and effect on health and education outcomes. It addresses what type of activity is more common among girls, and the extent to which girls’ work experience differs from that of boys. The study also analyses how gender stereotypes and cultural norms affect household decisions concerning children’s time use, and the implications this has for policy.

Key findings of the report include:

• boys are much more likely to be involved in economic activity and girls are more likely to be assigned responsibility for household chores
• differences by sex in rates of both economic activity and housework tend to grow with age
• girls are at least as likely as boys to be involved in work when "work" is defined to include both economic activity and household chores
• working boys and girls appear to differ little in terms of the amount of time they spend on economic activities, but girls spend more weekly hours performing household chores than boys
• boys’ economic activity is heavily concentrated in the agriculture sector, while girls’ economic activity tends to be more heterogeneous, distributed across commerce, services, manufacturing as well as agriculture
• work does not appear to have a greater affect on the ability of girls to attend school
• working girls have generally lower levels of work-related illness and injury than boys, suggesting that boys’ work could be more hazardous in nature than girls’ work.

• Full text of document
• Publisher details
• Send to a friend