Women take to the streets to campaign for gender pay gap in Colombia

Thousands of people have marched in the Colombian capital, Bogota on the occasion of the International Labor Day, urging the country’s unions to discuss the gender pay gap. Female protesters called for improving gender equality and allowing women to assume leading positions in the country A recent survey by the Colombian Federation of Human Resource Management (ACRIP) said that inequality appears even in management jobs where a director board can earn up to 36% more than his female counterpart does. ACRIP President, Gladis Vera, considers Colombia is not the worst case in Latin America despite the scandalous figures the survey has shown, but she urged concerned parties to start narrowing the overall gender pay gaps. She added that reducing the wage gap efforts are advancing at such a low speed that it would take 100 years to disappear. Experts suspect that the gap in rural areas is even worse, pointing to the difficult access to technology and lack of schooling opportunities for women. A lawyer at Sisma Mujer, a Colombian feminist organization, said women always raise the unemployment figures in times of crisis. According to official data, unemployment for women is 8 points above the figure for men in 2022.