Women and Men in the Caribbean Community

Women and Men in the Caribbean CommunityChart 5.5 Higher shares of economically active with low or no education among menthan womenPercentage distribution of economically active population by highest level of educationalattainment, selected countries, 1990s1007550250WomenMenWomenMenWomenMenWomenMenWomenMenWomenMenWomenMenWomenMenWomenMenWomenMenGuyana,1999Belize,1999Dominica,1997SaintLucia,1999Grenada,1998St Vincentand theGrenadines,1991TheBahamas,1998Source: Based on table 5.6.Note: Components do not add up to 100 due to omission of the "not stated category."S B d t bl 5 6TrinidadandTobago,1999Barbados, Suriname,1999 1997TertiarySecondaryUp to primaryin all except Saint Lucia, 1993, where the respective percentages were 74 for womencompared to 72 for men. The largest difference between women and men was in St. Vincentand the Grenadines, with 58 per cent of economically active women and 77 per cent ofeconomically active men having primary level or lower education. The higher levels ofeducation of women in the labour force, as compared to men, are either because of the highereducational attainment of women among the general population, or there may be differentialrequirements with respect to educational attainment for the employment of women and men(chart 5.5).The limited data on the training received by the economically active (both the employed andthe unemployed) show that for Jamaica, for all three periods shown, there were more womenwho had received vocational or professional training than there were men in both categories.Similarly for Trinidad and Tobago, women with vocational, trade or commercial training, andthose who had taken advantage of the Youth Training and Employment PartnershipProgramme (YTEPP), outnumbered men in the same categories. In Guyana, women outnumberedmen in the vocational training category in 1999. However, men benefited more thanwomen from on-the-job training, apprenticeships and other forms of non-formal training(table 5.7). Overall, proportionately more women than men in the labour force in Trinidadand Tobago received institutional training, 74 and 52 per cent, respectively, in 1990 (that isall categories except on-the-job and other training). This includes about (14 and 13 per cent90