ECONOMIC POWER OF WOMEN AND ITS DETERMINANTS IN MICHOACAN, MEXICO BETWEEN 2019 AND 2020.

• Author: Celeste, Andrea

INTRODUCTION

Ester Boserup was one of the first academic women to challenge the idea that modernization benefited women. In her work, Woman's Role in Economic Development (2007), Boserup pointed out that technological advances (in the agricultural sector) had marginalized women's work in Africa and reduced their social status. The first efforts of several international assistance agencies and the United Nations (UN) were focused on correcting the balance by creating opportunities that would give women greater economic independence, ideological resources to achieve equality in the public sphere and strong leverage to challenge patriarchal norms at home (Dixon, 1980).

The 1980s were instrumental in the theory and practice of including women in development. The foreign debt crisis of this decade allowed the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (WB) to make important cuts to programs to combat poverty in order to restructure debt. These actions had a negative impact on low-income women and their families, for which they were forced to join the labor force. The problem is that they found employment mostly in marginal jobs and in the informal economy (Beneria et al., 2016; Jaquette, 2017). As their participation in the labor market increased, women seeking to escape informality created micro and small businesses that strengthened employment and created wealth. This situation was strengthened when the political and social movement that sought to integrate women into development had to justify the financing programs on reasons of market efficiency rather than on grounds of equality. In practice, women and development became synonymous with microcredit programs that conformed to the pro-market approach and that resulted in the establishment of a large number of micro and small companies with a greater presence in the service sector (Thomas, 1990).

It should be noted that this situation is more typical of developing countries, because unlike the female gender in developed nations, women in developing countries are induced to enterprising activity by economic and social conditions, such as poverty, high unemployment rates, lower income or relationship problems, so they start their businesses to satisfy basic needs, which is why they tend to be smaller and focused on providing services with reduced added value. For these reasons, the success rate of women in business is low, as they do not have sufficient skills, relevant experience, training or education (Farrukh et al., 2018; Shah & Saurabh, 2015).

However, entrepreneurial activity and the occupation of leadership positions within companies by women is an important indicator of world economic development. The female gender plays an important role in the creation of employment and wealth, in the reduction of poverty, human development, the improvement of education and national development (Sajjad et al., 2020).

The issue acquires relevance, recognizing that in the last two decades, income inequality has grown to a greater extent within developing countries (UN Women, 2014). Among the reasons for inequality are the changes in the labor markets that have been fostered by the processes of commercial and financial liberalization of the markets (UNDP, 2014). In a man- of-working-age scenario like this, there is a significant gap in the contribution to the economy by men and women. According to data from INEGI (2019), in Michoacan, 79.3 percent of men are economically active, while 43.3 percent of women are. So, the question arises as to what is happening to the 56.7 percent of the female gender that does not participate in the state's economy. One possible answer is that she works in domestic activities.

However, in terms of hierarchy, women who are part of the labor market occupy significantly different positions than men...