Women in Latin America and the Caribbean - Cepal

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INTRODUCTION
The women of Latin America and the Caribbean are at the centre of one of the greatest cultural shifts in
history. In terms of the freedoms that have been won, it may safely be stated today that almost no woman
would want to live the life her grandmother did. Yet equality has advanced more slowly than it might
have done and, despite the drastic and probably irreversible changes that have occurred in the family,
working life and politics, the malaise of women in the region is evidence of the gap between their
contribution to society and the recognition they receive for it. Although women now play increasingly
important roles in decision-making and are a crucial force in the labour market, they are still overrepresented
among the poor and under-represented in politics. The key to this lag and to women’s
treatment as a vulnerable minority in public policies lies, to a great extent, in the impossibility of breaking
away from the cultural imperative of domestic work and the absence of men from care activities. Almost
half of all women over the age of 15 have no income of their own, the number of one-parent households
headed by women has increased and only a minority of men are occupied in unpaid work. Although it is
thanks to women’s work that the region’s poverty index has decreased by almost 10 percentage points,
women continue to earn less than men for equivalent work. They have secured the right to vote and to
stand for election, but affirmative action, such as the adoption of quota laws, has been necessary to
increase female occupancy of representative positions to 40% in some countries, while the great majority
of women remain outside the sphere of decision-making.
This document will examine the two themes of the tenth session of the Regional Conference on
Women in Latin America and the Caribbean, women’s contribution to the economy and social protection
—especially as it relates to unpaid labour— and political participation and gender parity in decisionmaking
at all levels, in the light of two key concepts: discrimination, as defined in the Convention on the
Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, and the sexual division of labour.
The Convention has acquired considerable importance in the region, since it has been ratified by
all the countries and, in some, such as Argentina, the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela and Brazil, it
forms part of the Constitution, together with other human rights instruments. Other countries, such as
Costa Rica and Ecuador, incorporate several of the Convention’s principles into the text of their
Constitution or use its definition of discrimination against women in legislation, as in Costa Rica’s law
7142 of 1990 on promotion of the social equity of women. Hence, this law establishes that
“discrimination against women” shall denote “any distinction, exclusion or restriction made on the basis
of sex which has the effect or purpose of impairing or nullifying the recognition, enjoyment or exercise by
women, irrespective of their marital status, on a basis of equality of men and women, of human rights and
fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural, civil or any other field”. A similar
definition is contained in the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela’s 1990 law on equal opportunities for
women.
This definition of discrimination is based on the concept of universal, indivisible, interdependent
and interrelated human rights. “The international community must treat human rights globally in a fair
and equal manner, on the same footing, and with the same emphasis. While the significance of national
and regional particularities and various historical, cultural and religious backgrounds must be borne in
mind, it is the duty of States, regardless of their political, economic and cultural systems, to promote and
protect all human rights and fundamental freedoms.” 2
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Paragraph 5 of the Vienna Declaration, adopted at the World Conference on Human Rights in 1993.