A Woman's Place in Latin America Today

There is little doubt that women are more powerful in Latin America than ever before. This past decade women have been elected to the presidencies of Chile, Argentina and Costa Rica. By the end of October, Brazil too may elect a woman president. Between 2000 and 2010, the percentage of women legislators in Latin America jumped to 22 percent, an average higher than any other region of the world, even Europe.

Similarly, women serve on boards and in management positions inside private companies in greater numbers. Women too are better educated, surpassing men in average years of schooling in most Latin American countries, except Bolivia and Mexico.

This expansion of power and skill in the public sphere has brought about many societal changes, increasing women's expectations for what they can earn and achieve on their own.

But Latin American women who want it all -- career and family -- face a major hurdle. Men may be growing more accustomed to women in power, helping to elect them to public office and accepting them in the workplace, but they are less likely to choose more powerful women to be mates.

According to a new report by the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, Latin American women aged 30 to 55 who are educated and skilled are less likely to be married than unskilled women. The authors, Ina Ganguli, Ricardo Hausmann, and Martina Viarengo, conclude that “Latin American men would prefer a lower-skilled wife who stays home” to a high-skilled spouse who works outside the home. As a consequence, women ages 30 to 55 in Latin America are more likely to be single than their counterparts in other regions of the world.

The report “‛Schooling Can’t Buy Me Love’: Marriage, Work, and the Gender Education Gap in Latin America,” also found that skilled women who do marry do so disproportionately more with less skilled men in Latin America than in other regions. According to Hausmann, the less-skilled husbands welcome the extra income these women bring to the home.

In countries with high levels of gross domestic product per capita (United States, the Netherlands, United Kingdom), skilled women are more likely to be married or living in cohabitation than unskilled women. What’s more, skilled men in rich countries such as the United States tend to marry women who are equally as skilled rather than women who stay home.

Now one might argue that it is skilled women that are choosing not to marry. To a certain degree that appears to be true. Skilled Latin American women are less likely than unskilled to say they need children to be self-fulfilled.

At the same time, however, there is a significant percentage of skilled women in the region interested in raising a family. According to World Value Surveys, having children remains an aspiration for 42 percent of skilled women, three times higher than it is for their U.S. counterparts.

Meanwhile, according to the Harvard report, skilled men are more likely to marry than unskilled men. These skilled men are marrying either unskilled women or skilled women who decide to stay home. (A skilled, married woman who stays home isn't likely to continue working because labor laws are far more flexible in countries such as the United States, more and more enabling mothers to work part time or from home).

Clearly, women have come a long way in Latin America. But the Harvard report suggests what women have long observed in the region, that men still feel somewhat uncomfortable with women's progress. Latin American men appear to be having a hard time adapting to some of the changes and seem to be either threatened by or not attracted to women who may appear intellectually superior.

The last decade demonstrates that efforts to improve the education of women have succeeded to a great degree in the region. As Hausmann explained it in an interview, the challenge now is “to make work, marriage and maternity more compatible.”
This is not to say that the two-income household is ideal. But does a woman who wants to have children with a man of her educational level have to give up all her earning potential? Unfortunately in Latin America the answer to that question seems to be still too much a function of what the man wants.