Parity democracy is far from being achieved in Latin America and the Caribbean, authorities and specialists warned at the CAF-CEPAL event

Parity democracy is far from being fulfilled in Latin America and the Caribbean, authorities and specialists in the field stated on Monday, March 6, 2023. High-level meeting: Public policies and cooperation for gender equalityorganized by CAF -development bank of Latin America- and the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (CEPAL) in Chile.

This meeting was held within the framework of the commemoration of International Women’s Day and on the occasion of the meeting of the CAF Directory at ECLAC headquarters and with Chile as the host country.

Through this high-level dialogue, CAF and ECLAC fostered a space to share experiences, ideas, and proposals to respond to pressing challenges related to the incorporation of the gender perspective in the design and implementation of public policies and regional cooperation.

The opening words of the meeting were given by José Manuel Salazar-Xirinachs, Executive Secretary of ECLAC; Sergio Díaz-Granados, Executive President of CAF; and Luz Vidal Huiriqueo, Undersecretary for Women and Gender Equity of Chile.

The cascade of shocks experienced by Latin America and the Caribbean threatens to stop or even reverse the progress made in the areas of gender equality and the guarantee of the rights of women, adolescents and girls in all their diversity, not only in the exercise of their autonomy but also in the sustainable development of the countries of the region, alerted José Manuel Salazar-Xirinachs.

The highest representative of ECLAC indicated that the level of participation of women in decision-making processes in the public sphere is around 30% in Latin America and the Caribbean, but if we focus on mayors, only 15% of them are occupied by women in the region, he said.

“This implies that the parity democracy that the region seeks is far from being fulfilled,” warned José Manuel Salazar-Xirinachs, for which he called for “more cooperation, more integration, more financing, more women and men committed to equality gender in decision making.

He Buenos Aires Commitmentapproved in the recent XV Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean and that integrates the Regional Gender Agenda, is a key instrument that provides guidelines to implement a new style of development that puts equality and sustainability of life at the center, summarized the senior official. In this direction, from ECLAC we have been proposing the horizon of the care society, as a bold response to the development crisis, he noted.

In his speech, Sergio Díaz-Granados, CAF’s Executive President, highlighted “that gender equality continues to be one of the great challenges in Latin America and we will not be able to achieve full development if there are not, effectively and decisively, activities in around financing and persistence in overcoming current inequalities”.

Within this framework, Sergio Díaz-Granados explained that “a year ago we launched our gender equality strategy and created the Gender, Diversity and Inclusion Management so that it is transversal in all CAF operations.”

Greeting Chile’s reincorporation into CAF as a full member, Luz Vidal Huiriqueo, the country’s Undersecretary for Women and Gender Equality, assured that “every opportunity for economic development for women is an opportunity for autonomy and decision-making.” “We cannot continue lamenting poverty, we cannot continue lamenting inequality, we cannot continue lamenting the loss of lives of women, girls and adolescents. We must make our efforts as States to work together” in order to eradicate economic, political and physical violence against women, she said.

Subsequently, the former President of Chile, the first Executive Director of UN Women and former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, gave a keynote speech in which she stressed that “gender equality is not a matter of one public policy in particular, is an urgency that as countries we must constantly examine because it affects millions of lives concretely and hard.

“I am glad that gender equality has been put at the center of development questions. We see how the history of perseverance of social movements, of women leaders, civil servants, entrepreneurs, academics, and activists has managed to show the obvious: that the participation of women in equal conditions and without exclusions is the only way to aspire to development,” declared Bachelet. .

“We have to renew our chances of development, fair, humane, sustainable, hand in hand with the only agreement that enables freedom and legitimate decisions: full democracy. More than ever, the renewal of our hope and our possibilities is urgent, more than ever it is necessary to underline that it is in our hands to build a better development, a better present and a better future for everyone”, he concluded.

Then there was a panel on equality policies and equality in politics, with the intervention of Renata Vargas Amaral, Secretary of International Affairs and Development of the Ministry of Planning and Budget of Brazil; Claudia Sanhueza Riveros, Undersecretary of Finance of Chile; Undersecretary Luz Vidal Huiriqueo; Michelle Muschett, Deputy Administrator and Director of the UNDP Regional Office for Latin America and the Caribbean; and Carolina Leitao, President of the Association of Municipalities and Mayor of Peñalolén (Chile). The space featured introductory words by Ana María Baiardi, Manager of Gender, Diversity and Inclusion at CAF, and moderation by Ana Güezmes, Director of ECLAC’s Gender Affairs Division.

Finally, there were words from María José Torres, Resident Coordinator of the United Nations System of Chile, and Alejandra Claros, CAF Secretary General.

In a document prepared by him Gender Equality Observatory for Latin America and the Caribbean (OIG) of ECLAC for International Women’s Day 2023, it is stated that “in the last 45 years, at the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean, the States have advanced in the development of a deep Regional Gender Agenda , progressive and comprehensive, which guides the public policies of the countries to achieve normative and substantive gender equality, the guarantee of the rights and autonomy of women. Guaranteeing the full participation of women in public positions and political representation and achieving parity democracy is an objective of the region”.

Since the approval of the first quota law in the world, in Argentina, in 1991, several countries in the region have approved legislation in this area or have strengthened it: until 2022, nine countries had quota laws for office elections of representation and nine countries had enacted constitutional reforms, electoral reforms or laws aimed at promoting parity.

However, the persistence of patriarchal structural knots in the countries’ political systems continues to limit progress towards parity democracy, ECLAC maintains.

In the last presidential term, the number of female ministers reached an average of 28.7% in Latin America and the Caribbean. As of August 2022, 36 countries and territories in the region had 25% or more women ministers in ministerial cabinets. Only in Costa Rica (50%) and Chile (58%) was parity a fact in the governments. In the Caribbean, except in the cases of Anguilla, Barbados, Guyana, and Trinidad and Tobago, all governments had at least one female minister in the cabinet.

Meanwhile, female participation in national parliaments reached an average of 34.9% in 2022. It is estimated that it will take more than 40 years to reach parity in national parliaments.

On the other hand, the election of women in the councils has increased in a much more significant way: the average number of elected women councilors (or councilors) was 32.7% as of December 2021.

According to ECLAC, among the institutional, social and cultural structures that persist and restrict women’s access to the exercise of power are: the sexual division of labor and the social organization of care; gender-based violence against women in public and political life; the political culture and strategies of the political parties that still incorporate parity as a guiding principle in a minority; and the limited information on the diversity of people who are elected or appointed to decision-making positions, which does not allow for intersectional analyzes that make visible the additional barriers faced by the different groups of women who have fewer resources, networks and time available.