Mexico City – In June 2022, a joint report by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) and the International Labor Organization (ILO), revealed the effects on employment left by the COVID-19 pandemic in Latin America during 2021. According to the two organizations, the health crisis affected female employment more significantly, “while the participation rate for men grew 3.0 percentage points in 2021, compared to levels of 2020, that of women only grew 2.8 percentage points in the same period,” says the report.
On the other hand, the Global Learning Survey 2021 report – carried out by Pearson – highlights that three million women around the world stopped working during the pandemic and 74% of people surveyed globally believe that prejudice and discrimination continue to prevent women from finding work.
Turning the Tide
It is undeniable that the pandemic left structural lags that affect certain sectors of the population more, such as women, but given the changes that have occurred in recent years, they are the ones who are looking for an improvement in their working conditions. Women are taking control of their own destinies and their response to the crisis has been resilient, taking deliberate steps to succeed, even as they continue to face traditional and COVID-19 challenges.
According to the Pearson study in 2021, 81% of women around the world have used the pandemic as an opportunity to re-evaluate their lives and careers. In addition to this, 88% of women seeking work want to improve their professional skills and increase their communication skills. This shows that, faced with complex situations, women have not given up and are looking for new opportunities and challenges that allow them to continue on their path of professional and personal growth, something Pearson calls long life learning, or learning during the course of life.
On the other hand, the conclusions of the report carried out by ECLAC and the ILO make it clear that there is a great need to strengthen the instruments that facilitate the reintegration of people into the labor market.
In accordance with this, one of the alternatives that are presented for women who are looking for a change and new opportunities, are the online educational platforms that are supported by technology. And for this, as Jorge Luis Íñiguez, director of Innovation and Product Strategy for Pearson in Latin America, mentions, “it is essential to have equal access to technology.”
“We face a huge digital divide in the world. It is a fact that the inequalities that exist in the field of technology have repercussions in the educational field and inevitably move to the workplace. That is why equal access to technology or the internet is essential and that has to be a joint effort between governments, public and private universities, as well as society,” declared Íñiguez.
The road ahead is long, but the alternatives are clear. Recognizing that there are gender and educational inequalities is the first step in creating new paths to improvement and well-being for the entire population.
About the Global Learning Survey
The 2021 Global Learning Survey brings together the views of 6,000 women from six different countries on how the challenges of COVID-19 have influenced their lives, careers and communities. To download Pearson’s Global Learning Survey 2021, click HERE.
About Pearson
Pearson, a world leader in developing solutions for education, believes that learning can transform lives and therefore invests in the development of products and services for a complete educational training, from kindergarten to higher education. and professional. With more than 150 years of history, it is present in 80 countries and has more than 35,000 employees who work to make a difference in the lives of more than 100 million children, youth and adults who use Pearson educational solutions. For more information visit: pearson.com