Employment, Segregation and Wages per Gender

The pace at which women incorporated into the workforce rose sharply during the last two decades of the twentieth century, particularly along the nineties. The restructuring of the productive apparatus and the deterioration of social conditions drove to an unprecedented increase in women’s participation rates (graph VI.1.). As before, demographic and cultural factors seeded this new drive which overlapped and reinforced the previous long-term trend. A decreasing fertlily, along with an observed belatedness of marrying decisions (and, consequently, a reduction of years spent in child rearing) among Mexican women, all made possible the massive incorporation of women of reproductive age into waged labor.2 An increasing number of separations, divorces and marriage ruptures may also be counted in as an explanation for the rising number of working female household-heads3. Male activity rates hardly changed between 1990 and 2000. The decrease in the rates corresponding to people who are 60 years old or older slowed down while the drop in the activity rates of both children and youth (from 12 to 24 years old) was curbed. The low level of labor incomes along with employment instability induced many families members – whom otherwise would have been able to devote themselves to studying – to join the labor force. According t