Labor market and gender: an analysis of labor inequalities in light of Latin American structuralism (Argentina, 2017-2022)

Abstract

The following article aims to analyze the dynamics of the Argentine social structure of labor, during the period 2017-2022, contemplating gender inequalities. It starts from the guidelines offered by Latin American structuralism, in articulation with the segmented markets approaches, focusing on the attributes of the productive system and the role of the regulatory components of employment as factors that explain the differences in the way the labor force is employed in the market. In this context, it is postulated that differences in labor participation by gender are associated with the persistence of a segmented occupational structure. Two goals are proposed: a) to examine changes in the occupational structure in terms of the sectoral composition of the demand for employment, its regulatory components, and gender; and b) to analyze the role of gender differences, sectoral occupational insertion and job qualification in terms of access to quality jobs. The chosen strategy is quantitative, using micro-data from the Permanent Household Survey (EPH) of the National Institute of Statistics and Census (INDEC) with a time frame that allows us to account for the economic effect of the COVID-19 health crisis on labor insertions. The paper provided consistent empirical evidence to examine structuralist explanations, which support the presence -in peripheral economies- of an urban labor market characterized by structural segmentation patterns, in which different markets with particular socio-institutional regulations coexist, problematizing the singularities of labor insertions when gender differences are considered.