Women's salaries in the region

Salary equality is one of the cornerstones of equal rights. In a true meritocracy, age, sex, creed and colour shouldn't matter when doing a job of work. This post looks at the results of a recent CEPAL (Latin American/Caribbean Economic Commission) survey into male/female salaries with the results given for the South American states plus Mexico. Before we go any further, a little context is necessary, so here are three points to consider:

• Worldwide, The United Nations estimates female salaries at 75% that of male. However the gap closes when both sexes have a similar high level of education (e.g. both are university graduates).

• One problem is that of literacy: Surveys suggest that women bear 65% of the illiteracy burden regionwide. Although obviously a discrimination problem in its own right, it is also a direct cause of lower salaries.
  

• Clearly direct undiluted sexism is part of the problem. No two ways about it, and it looks like even the best performing countries are still guilty as charged.

(click to enlarge)

So all that said we can now have a look at the chart, and we see that (shock horror don't tell the Miami Herald) the region's nerve centre of antidemocratic behaviour actually has the best regional performance. Venezuela is also the only regional state to outperform the UN's worldwide average. Also relatively good is Colombia, and although nothing to write home about I'd venture an "acceptable" for Ecuador, Chile and Uruguay.

Interestingly, the next three on the list are the region's big three economies, and neither Brazil, Argentina nor Mexico can be very proud of their performance in this (along with Bolivia).

And then... hey wow!....hooda thunkit?? Peru, that model for the rest of the region (according to the fools that never cross the Rio Grande) has the second worst record in the whole region, only kept from last place by the perennial whipping boy, Paraguay. Nice job, Peru.....you must be proud of the progress you're making.

I'll make a bet with you right now, without even checking with Fitch, Moody's or Standard & Poors: I betcha five bucks that this statistic is not taken into account when deciding whether a country deserves investment grade.