Editor's note: Stephanie Leutert is a research associate at the Council on Foreign Relations. This entry of Latin America's Moment originally appeared here. The views expressed are her own.
Over the last decade, poverty, and inequality have fallen throughout Latin America. Behind these positive trends are external factors, such as high global commodity prices and substantial foreign direct investment flows. And there are also internal influences, such as Latin America’s growing middle class, increased consumption, and successful government-run conditional cash transfers (which offer money to low income families who keep their kids healthy and in school). But another, less talked, about factor moving the region toward greater economic development is the millions of Latin American women in the workforce.
According to an August 2012 World Bank report, Latin American women have been responsible for 30 percent of the region’s extreme poverty reduction over the past decade, as a result of their increased workforce participation and higher earnings. Women’s income has had an even greater effect on the lowest rungs of the socioeconomic ladder, reducing the severity of poverty more than twice as effectively as men’s earnings. And, as in other places, the global economic downturn hit men’s incomes the hardest. In response, Latin American women picked up the slack, resulting in more than half of 2009’s poverty reduction.
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