Nº 360 (November, 2025). Mariana Marchionni, Julián Pedrazzi & María Florencia Pinto

We study women’s labor market outcomes in rural Latin America, focusing on how motherhood interacts with broader changes in rural employment. Using harmonized household surveys for 14 countries over the past two decades, we document trends in employment, hours, earnings, and job types, and estimate motherhood effects around the first childbirth separately for rural and urban areas. We show that, despite substantial educational and labor market progress, rural women continue to lag behind both rural men and urban women, with only limited convergence over time. At the same time, rural employment has shifted away from primary activities and toward services and more formal employment arrangements—changes typically associated with improved opportunities for women. Motherhood, however, pushes in the opposite direction. Although rural mothers experience a smaller absolute employment decline and greater subsequent recovery than urban mothers, childbirth widens rural–urban earnings disparities and, among women who remain employed, increases employment in primary activities and informality while reducing formal salaried work, with unpaid family work emerging as a particularly important adjustment margin. These results show that motherhood can hinder convergence, as it pushes rural women toward forms of employment that run counter to broader changes in rural labor markets typically associated with improved opportunities for women.

JEL codes: D63, J13, J16, J22, J31

Suggested citation: Marchionni, M., J. Pedrazzi & M.F. Pinto (2025). Women, Motherhood, and Structural Transformation. Insights from Rural Latin America. CEDLAS Working Papers Nº 360, November, 2025, CEDLAS-FCE-Universidad Nacional de La Plata.