This article seeks to investigate the women´s labor force participation, especially in situations of poverty in the town of Popayan (Colombia) between 2007-2011. To this end, an analysis of infor-mation provided by the Great Integrated Household Survey (GEIH) and a participatory workshop with 90 unemployed women, and in a poverty situation to the local level was performed. With these data there were performed long terms econometric analyses through the Hodrick-Prescott filter, an analysis of Johansen cointegration and a Granger causality test to determine the female labor force and its relation to Popayan economic cycles. The results show among other things, that in all labor indicators used traditionally, women are always at a disadvantage compared to men, a situation that is accentuated in women under poverty. Additionally, we found that women seek employment when the economic cycle is recessive and they do not do it when it is expansive.