Several academic works have studied the issue of the gender gap from the perspective of wage inequality (i.e. the gender wage gap). However, little work has been done to understand the gender gap from the perspective of labour (i.e. the gender labour gap). This article contributes to the research on the gender labour gap by studying the dynamic of the female labour market across different economic sectors in two macrozones of Chile. The results revealed that the impact of economic changes on the gender labour gap is heterogeneous and complex, and the way in which companies respond to these changes in terms of female labour depends on the sector and the geographical area. That is, in some contexts, economic changes reduced the gender labour gap and in others, the same changes caused an increase in the gender gap. This suggests that policy programs aimed at reducing the gender gap should be focused on the context of a sector with the assistance of the local authority. This is because aggregate data hides the sectorial complexity and this suggests that policies at the national level that are based on aggregate data may not be effective for all sectors.
JEL: J11, J16.