Hundreds of students marched through Palma yesterday to begin the start of a week’s worthy of demonstrations and activities to marks International Women’s Day this Sunday.
Under slogans against male discrimination, gender violence “Franco eduction” the march took place as figures were released which revealed that female unemployment has fallen four per cent since 2015.
A study of women and the labour market in the Balearics shows that female unemployment fell on average from 17.3% in 2015 to 13.4% in 2019.
The report by the government’s employment observatory indicates that active female employment in 2019 was 73.3%. Nationally this was 70.1%, while in the EU it was 68.2%.
The salary gap between men and women narrowed from 20% in 2015 to 15% in 2017, which is the last year for which figures are currently available.
The employment ministry says this was a more pronounced reduction than at national level.
In terms of women registered with social security, there was a 16.5% increase between 2015 and 2019.
For men, there was a 17.8% rise.
The female rate of employment went up one percentage point to 63.3% by 2019.
The figure for the country as a whole was 58.8%.
Of other findings, the rate of part-time working among women was significantly higher than men - 19.5% versus seven per cent.
A conclusion is that this is because women “continue to assume domestic tasks”.
Employment minister Iago Negueruela said yesterday that the data show that it is necessary to continue pursuing policies, which have been shown to be efficient, for combating gender inequality in the labour market.