Country Gender Profiles for Latin America and the Caribbean

The Latin America and the Caribbean Country Gender Scorecards is a comprehensive tool designed to provide country-specific insights for monitoring and benchmarking gender equality across 11 priority areas.

These areas include  participation of women in STEM fields, school-to-work transition and school dropout rates, teenage pregnancy, gender-based violence, access to more and better jobs, ownership of productive assets (including digital ), unpaid household and care work, and female leadership. The 2025 edition introduces a poverty-gender nexus component. 

Grounded in evidence-based practices, the tool also offers policy options and interventions aimed at addressing these priority areas and closing gender gaps.

Gender Data at Glance in Latin America and the Caribbean 

Foundational Well-being  

• STEM Education: In most Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) countries, the proportion of women with tertiary degrees in STEM fields is 2 to 3 times lower than men. 
• Youth Employment and Education: More young women than men are out of employment, education, and training, with gender gaps reaching 31 percentage points in Central America.
• Secondary Education: In 22 LAC countries, a ‘reverse’ gender gap persists in lower secondary education, where boys are less likely than girls to complete schooling.
• Adolescent Pregnancy: LAC has the world’s second-highest adolescent pregnancy rate (51.7 births per 1,000 girls aged 15-19), just behind Sub-Saharan Africa. The highest rates are in Central America, but the regional average is declining.
• Gender-Based Violence: in LAC countries with comparable data, as high as one in four women have experienced physical and/or sexual intimate partner violence in the last 12 months. 

Economic Opportunities and Participation

• Poverty Penalty: LAC women in their peak productive years (25-35) are more likely to live in poor households  than men, with a ‘poverty penalty’ of up to 7 percentage points. 
• Vulnerable Employment: Employed women in LAC are more likely to be in more vulnerable, low-paying jobs, such as own-account or contributing family work, though some Caribbean countries are exceptions.
• Digital inclusion: In LAC, gender disparities in internet access reach up to 19 percentage points, yet countries like Trinidad and Tobago, Colombia, and Belize have successfully closed the gap.
• Unpaid Domestic Work: Women in LAC perform two to three times more unpaid domestic and care work than men, limiting their economic participation.

Female Leadership

• Management Positions: Women in LAC hold 39.6% of senior and middle management positions, though the Dominican Republic has reached gender parity.
• Firm Ownership: While over half of the LAC countries with available data report more than 50% female participation in firm ownership, other countries in the region see rates as low as 15%, reflecting persistent gaps in entrepreneurship.