In today’s episode of Brazilian Women in Economics’s podcast, we talked to Cecília Machado about women in labour market, the costs of maternity and the abortion debate. She is a columnist of Folha de Sao Paulo in Market section, an economist from UFRJ, master in Economics from PUC-RJ and PhD from Columbia University (US).

When she told us the trajectory of her life, she remembered that in her undergraduate period there wasn’t any discussion about gender in Economics. When she had gone to the US to be a PhD student, she realized that researchers in this subject were more advanced. Then begun Machado’s interest in cultural, social and legislative aspects in Economics, mainly in differences between men and women: wage gap, forms of parental leave, participation in the market labour, contraceptive methods…

She also discusses how covid-19 pandemic has affected women’s career: the closing of schools is directly related to the decline of women’s participation in the labour market.

When Machado talked about the abortion debate, she mentioned the polemic gist. But she did emphasize that pregnancy interruption is not a birth control method (unlike the bill, which promoted a radical change for women in the labour market but is not largely utilized by Brazilian young women); it as a public health problem that results in inequality income and gender. Consequently, it is also an economic problem.

Listen to the episode below: