This article originally appeared at Frente Auténtico del Trabajo on November 5, 2025.
Although women’s economic participation has advanced, the conditions for entry and retention remain marked by profound shortcomings, since of Mexico’s 5.5 million existing economic units, less than 40,000 have a collective labor contract, which means that less than 1% have a formal instrument to negotiate working conditions with a gender perspective.
This was a statement made by Alma Ruby Villareal, a former labor judge and former Bologna scholarship recipient, after affirming that “there is participation, but there is no negotiating power; that explains why economic independence has not yet translated into real equality.”
Villareal revealed that the 6 most important unions in the country are headed by a man and do not even have schemes that allow women to have access to greater leadership.
At the panel The Labour Market through a Gender Perspective; Perspectives & Challenges, she explained that “the first obstacle is low formal participation: while 75% of men participate in the labor market, only 46% of women manage to join, and most do so without social security or full access to rights.”
A second obstacle, she said, is occupational segregation and high informality, given that women are concentrated in the lowest-paid sectors, commerce, services and care, and 55% remain in informal schemes, without benefits or stability.
A third structural factor is the gender pay gap, as women, on average, earn 19% less than men for the same work, and the disparity is even greater in rural areas and among agricultural and indigenous workers. “Added to this is a fourth obstacle: violence and discrimination in the workplace. More than one in three women has experienced some form of violence in the workplace, and weak regulations that fail to distinguish between harassment and bullying hinder prosecution.”
Furthermore, she said that a fifth critical factor is the digital divide, where 63% of women who do not use the internet identify the lack of digital skills as the main barrier, which limits their access to better-paying jobs and emerging sectors associated with the digital economy.
The sixth obstacle is the overload of unpaid care work. The absence of structural policies and public infrastructure, such as nurseries and care centers, forces millions of women to choose between employment and family responsibilities, hindering their job retention and advancement.
For her part, Patricia Kurczyn, a former Bologna Group scholarship recipient, said that although there have been significant advances, such as the 2019 labor reform, the ratification of ILO Convention 190, and the constitutional reform on substantive equality approved in 2024, its implementation is still insufficient.
They agreed that union representation also shows shortcomings; only between 15% and 16% of general secretariats are headed by women, and the most influential unions remain under male leadership.
In the business sector, progress is also gradual: only 36% of companies have policies to combat the wage gap and only 40% have active pay equity strategies, even though 53% have already prepared diagnoses.
The specialists stressed that the transition to equality will not only be legal or declarative, but structural, and will require coordination between the State, companies and unions, along with a national care policy that recognizes the economic contribution of unpaid work.
“Equality is not a concession or a favor, it is an act of justice. As long as women’s work remains invisible, there will be no economic justice,” they stated.
Meanwhile, Valeria Nuzzo, from the University of Campania Luigi Vancitelli in Italy, explained that the wage gap between men and women is not limited solely to a difference in base salary, but is deeply linked to the way in which female work is distributed in historically undervalued sectors.
She pointed out that when a sector becomes “feminized,” it tends to lose social prestige and economic value. She cited the education sector as an example, which in the past, when dominated by men, enjoyed social authority and higher salaries, whereas today, being predominantly staffed by women, it is no longer perceived as strategic and lags behind in recognition and remuneration.
She also explained that the other side of inequality is interrupted career paths: the fewer years of work accumulated due to a lack of shared responsibility for caregiving and motherhood translates into lower income, lower pensions, and a structural “wage ceiling.” Added to this is the so-called “motherhood penalty,” an informal but widespread penalty that impacts promotions, advancements, and performance reviews.
Valeria Nuzzo noted that Europe has a robust legal framework to combat wage inequality, with principles already established in the Treaty of Rome (1957) and reinforced in numerous subsequent directives. However, she clarified that initially these regulations were driven more by economic competition between countries than by a genuine recognition of the right to equality.
Six Structural Barriers Hinder Gender Equality in Mexican Workplaces
November 5, 2025
Equality is not a concession or a favor, it is an act of justice. As long as women’s work remains invisible, there will be no economic justice.
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