Only 3 out of 10 workers in the private sector are women, reveals Servir

Within the framework of International Women’s Day, the National Civil Service Authority (To serve) prepared a study “Women in the Peruvian civil service 2022”, which reveals that during 2020, women, in percentage terms, had a similar participation in the labor market than in 2019.

According to the study, five out of 10 public servants are women, while in the formal private sector only three out of 10 people are.

This greater presence of men, especially in the formal private sector, is due to the fact that women were the most affected at work during the pandemic, which caused them to leave the labor force.

Focusing on the public sector, the participation of women increased by one percentage point compared to the previous year and five points during the 2004-2020 period. Therefore, the average annual growth has been 2.1%, reaching 48% in 2020, while men have experienced an annual advance of 0.8%. At the level of governmentfemale servants show a greater presence in regional entities (57%), followed by national entities (47%) and local entities (32%).

Wage gap

The average income of men is higher than that of women over the years. In this context, this trend has been maintained during 2020.

In recent years, in the civil service, men have earned more than 15% of what women earnwhich would be explained by the limited access of civil servants to the best paid positions in the State (civil servants and directors), where despite the substantial increase, the participation of women is still below that of men.

However, in the period 2008-2020, the wage gap it decreased from 24% to 10% in public administration; reducing by 2%. In contrast, salary differences in the formal private sector amount to 21%, an amount significantly higher than in the public sector.

The wage gaps by gender are dissimilar, according to the education level culminated. In 2020, the greatest differences are found between male and female servers with primary (43%) and secondary (44%) education, followed by those with non-university or technical higher education (16%) and university higher education (6%) . In other words, the lowest wage gaps, in percentage terms, occur in the groups of public servants with higher educational levels.

“Although part of the wage gap between men and women in the civil service could be explained by objective characteristics such as the position held, work experience, hours worked and area of ​​residence, the proportion of the wage gap not explained by the aforementioned characteristics could be caused by gender differences”, reveals the Servir study.