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Social origin, gender, migratory background or geographical environment continue to decisively affect people's training in the job skills needed in the 21st century, points out the OECD in a report published this Tuesday.
Competencies in information processing, such as literacy, arithmetic or problem-solving, as well as social and emotional skills are influenced by people's birth, warns the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
These disparities limit opportunities for economic growth, generate inefficiencies in the labor market, and contribute to maintaining social gaps, if not deepening them.
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Recent technological advances and the demand for highly qualified profiles have not eliminated the barriers to equality in access to training and the acquisition of essential knowledge derived from external elements. That translates into inequalities when accessing certain positions, indicates the OECD, which on the one hand highlights that the family's economic level influences access to education, but also when finding a qualified job. This causes, on the one hand, people with less talent to access higher quality training, but also to positions for which they are not qualified, which leads to a loss of competitiveness. The report also detects significant differences between countries, demonstrating that public policies, when well-directed, can help reduce those gaps. Socioeconomic differences remain the main vector of differences in training and access to key positions. Families with greater resources can offer superior financial, emotional, and cultural support. In societies with greater income inequality, those differences are more pronounced, as are those between families of urban origin, where there are more opportunities, than in rural ones. By gender, the report shows that women outperform men in literacy-related skills, while men are above in arithmetic, a distance that sharpens among highly qualified people, which shows the existence of a "glass ceiling" that limits female participation in certain areas. The gender gap starts at an early age, with girls achieving better results in reading, collaborative problem-solving, and creative thinking compared to boys who excel in mathematics and financial training. The result is that men access professions with higher salaries, 14% more per hour, according to the report, and therefore also have a lower unemployment rate. These inequalities are exacerbated, in many cases, by the education systems themselves, especially in higher education, which is highly conditioned by socioeconomic background. The study reveals that fewer women pursue training related to mathematics and technology and that students from affluent families can prolong their studies, giving them a competitive advantage in the job market. The differences continue to be noticeable in access to continuing education, one of the tools that the OECD considers can reduce gaps and improve equal opportunities. The report shows that while 61% of workers with university studies continue to improve their training once they enter the labor market, only 19% of those with secondary education do so.
