ECLAC presents redesign of the Gender Equality Observatory to partner organizations

December 3, 2024. Within the framework of the 66th Presiding Officers of the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean, the meeting was held “Update and Redesign of the Gender Equality Observatory of Latin America and the Caribbean (OIG)” at the ECLAC headquarters.

This meeting was dedicated to discussing the technological and methodological update of the Observatory, and brought together representatives of countries and partner organizations of the OIG, including FAO, ILO, UN Women, UNDP, UNFPA, UNICEF, AECID and SEGIB. Representatives also participated from IICA, the United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD), the Women’s Secretariat of Mexico, the INEGI of Mexico and the National Statistics Office of the Dominican Republic.

The participants congratulated the proposal presented by the Gender Affairs Division (DAG) of ECLAC and they committed to collaborating within the framework of their mandates to strengthen this fundamental tool for monitoring gender equality in the region.

The OIG, established in 2007 as part of the Quito Consensus agreements, has established itself as a reference for monitoring the Regional Gender Agenda and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. This redesign strengthens its role by integrating modern technologies, such as a new technological platform that improves accessibility, navigation and visualization, ensuring that it continues to be a relevant platform for decision-making in the region. Over its 17 years, the OIG has made progress in compiling, analyzing, and disseminating key indicators such as feminicide, total work time, child marriage, and women’s political participation. With more than 114,000 visits registered in October 2024, and nearly 1.9 million visits during the last year, the Observatory is positioned as one of the most consulted sites within the ECLAC web environment.

Ana Güezmes, Director of the Gender Affairs Division of ECLAC, highlighted the key milestones that will mark 2025: the 30 years of the Beijing Declaration of Action and Platform and the XVI Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean , which will undoubtedly translate into massive and periodic use of the Observatory: “we seek to improve the delivery of information in a strategic way, exploring specific studies that can be presented at the Regional Conference on Women,” she added.

Güezmes reiterated the commitment to work so that the OIG continues to be a relevant tool to consolidate gender statistics in the region: “we will continue to promote systematic and sustainable initiatives to guarantee that the Observatory continues to respond to current and future demands,” he concluded.

In the words of Lucía Scuro, Senior Social Affairs Officer of the Gender Affairs Division of ECLAC, “the Observatory not only documents the challenges, but also offers concrete tools for governments to act in favor of substantive equality.” Scuro recalled that the OIG has made it possible to articulate the efforts between the Statistical Conference of the Americas and the Regional Conference on Women, making possible the generation of key analyzes and regional standards with the contributions of the member states, and presented the adjustments of the new version of the Observatory, including the organization of the regulations repository in accordance with the implementation axes of the Montevideo Strategy (2016).

Within the framework of these changes, the essential role of partner organizations and national mechanisms for the advancement of women (MAM) was highlighted. close collaboration with national statistical offices and agencies of the United Nations system, which has allowed the consolidation of a methodological approach that covers both the most emblematic dimensions and the new demands for statistical information.

Karen García, Statistician of the Gender Affairs Division of ECLAC, presented the methodological review of the OIG indicators that has been carried out within the framework of its redesign: “we have reflected on the validity of most of the indicators, and identified the need to update the methodologies of some of them, as well as to add some others,” he noted. The proposal involves the aggregation of indicators such as “distribution of the employed population by branches of economic activity according to sex”, to make visible the high concentration of women’s employment in sectors related to the care economy.

For her part, Ingrid Gómez Saracibar, from the Mexican Women’s Secretariat, highlighted that “recognizing the efforts and advances in the generation of gender statistics is essential to guarantee equitable development in the region. This work will be key for the next Regional Conference on Women, which will be held in Mexico City between August 12 and 15, 2025.”

The session concluded with a strategic dialogue between participants, in which proposals were collected to improve the updating and expansion of OIG content. This collective exercise reaffirms the role of the Observatory as a key tool to measure progress in gender equality and support processes to improve the quality of statistical production with a gender perspective in the region. Reflections also included how to integrate new technologies and digital platforms to ensure broader and more equitable access to information.