Gender, Work and Inequality

This chapter seeks to fulfill the twofold objective of describing the patterns of relative continuity and discontinuity in the work trajectories of Mexican women belonging to two birth cohorts (1962–1971 and 1972–1981) and identifying the various factors (familial, social and market) that increase the likelihood of their having continuous trajectories. Our hypothesis is that, despite the increase in female economic activity, the discontinuity has not declined between cohorts, and factors related to the subordination of women to the family world outweigh labor market factors. Based on the 2017 Mexican Retrospective Demographic Survey (EDER), we build synthetic indicators of the labor trajectory to analyze the overall work experience of women in different areas: continuity or discontinuity along the path, the predominant types of labor insertion (economic sector, informality) and union throughout the working life. With these synthetic indicators we use a logistic regression model on the probability of having a continuous career. The statistical exercise demonstrated that labor intermittency is still predominant; there has been no change in favor of women’s permanence in the labor market between the two cohorts, and one condition of the family world, being married throughout one’s working life, is the factor that most interferes with continuity.