Educating the future workforce

The Hummingbird Vol. 11 No. 3

Child marriages and early unions: inequality and poverty among women, girls and adolescents in Latin America and the Caribbean

Child, early and forced marriages and unions are defined as a union in which at least one of the parties is under the age of 18. The overwhelming majority of formal and informal child marriages and unions involve girls, although in some cases their male spouses are also under 18. As stated in the Joint general recommendation No. 31 of the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women/general comment No. 18 of the Committee on the Rights of the Child on harmful practices, and Human Rights Council resolution 29/8 of 2 July 2015, on strengthening efforts to prevent and eliminate ch…

Gender equality and the care society

This article reviews the conceptual contributions of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) to the understanding of gender inequalities in Latin America and the Caribbean over recent decades. Having examined the information available, it analyses the persistence of the sexual division of labour as a structural challenge of gender inequality and then presents the ECLAC proposal for a move towards a new model of development and social organization, namely the care society, and its implications for public policy design in the region.…

The Hummingbird Vol. 10 No. 12

Preventing femicides: an obligation for States and a persistent challenge in the region

The UNiTE by 2030 to End Violence against Women campaign of the Secretary General of the United Nations, which has been under way since 2008, aims to prevent and eliminate gender-based violence against women and girls worldwide. The World Health Organization (WHO, 2021) estimates that 31% of women aged 15–49 have experienced violence at the hands of an intimate partner and sexual violence inflicted by others. This multi-stakeholder campaign is part of the United Nations system’s efforts to support Latin American and Caribbean States in fulfilling their due diligence obligation to prevent, inve…

Public policies for gender equality in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM): challenges for the economic autonomy of women and transformative recovery in Latin America

The fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics, commonly referred to by the acronym STEM, have emerged as a promising area in which to address the current digital revolution and accelerated technological change, exacerbated and complicated by the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic. Can STEM serve as a path to gender equality and economic autonomy for women in Latin America? The question is gaining ground. This report addresses an ongoing debate in the region in recent decades that must be reframed to meet an urgent need for new solutions and, above all, to transcend one-di…

Bringing an end to violence against women and girls and femicide or feminicide: a key challenge for building a care society

Violence against women and girls and its most extreme expression, femicide, feminicide, or the gender-related killing of women and girls,1 dramatically bring to light the persistence of the structural challenges of gender inequality and gender-based discrimination and violence against women and girls in Latin America and the Caribbean. The deep historical and structural roots of patriarchal, discriminatory and violent cultural patterns, grounded in a culture of privilege, have proven among the most difficult to dismantle. Gender-based violence against women and girls is systemic and persistent…

Report on the activities of the Commission, 2022

Since its establishment in 1948, the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) has been at the forefront of economic and development thinking in the region, fully committed to supporting member States in achieving sustainable development. This report on the activities undertaken by ECLAC in 2022 highlights the Commission’s key achievements and contributions throughout the year and is hereby submitted for the consideration of member States in accordance with the accountability and transparency framework promoted by the United Nations.…

Draft programme of work of the ECLAC system 2025

The draft programme of work of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) for 2025 is hereby submitted to the member States of the Commission for their consideration. It highlights the annual priorities that will be considered by the Committee for Programme and Coordination (CPC) and the United Nations General Assembly as part of the intergovernmental reviewing exercise. Under the framework of the United Nations, ECLAC is responsible for fostering the economic, social and environmentally sustainable development of Latin America and the Caribbean through international c…

Report of the Sixty-fourth meeting of the Presiding Officers of the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean

45 years of the Regional Gender Agenda

First version, June 22, 2022. Forty-five years ago, the first Regional Conference on the Integration of Women into the Economic and Social Development of Latin America was held (Havana, 1977), as an intergovernmental platform for the region following the World Conference of the International Women’s Year (Mexico City, 1975). This meeting culminated in the adoption by the governments of the region of the Regional Plan of Action for the Integration of Women into Latin American Economic and Social Development, the region’s first road map for active inclusion of women in economic, political, socia…

Buenos Aires Commitment (Fifteenth session of the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean)

The Buenos Aires Commitment was adopted at the fifteenth session of the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean, which was organized by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), the Regional Office for the Americas and the Caribbean of the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN-Women) and the Government of Argentina and held in Buenos Aires from 7 to 11 November 2022. The Buenos Aires Commitment charts a path towards a care society, with agreements in new areas for transformative recovery with gender equalit…

Report of the Fifteenth session of the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean 

The Hummingbird Vol. 10 No. 5

The Hummingbird Vol. 10 No. 4

The importance of time-use surveys in guiding social policies: the gendered impact of COVID-19 on paid and unpaid work in the Caribbean

Recognizing the importance of unpaid work is critical to achieving gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls, which is Goal 5 of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Like most SDGs that are focused on the people dimension of the 2030 Agenda, the COVID-19 pandemic has reversed some of the gains made in gender equality and women’s empowerment. Following the onset of COVID-19, many women have been forced to devote greater time to unpaid work activities, the extent of which has not been previously well-documented in the Caribbean. In this study, we evaluate how women and men allo…

Report of the Sixty-second meeting of the Presiding Officers of the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean

Gender equality and women’s and girls’ autonomy in the digital era: contributions of education and digital transformation in Latin America and the Caribbean

This document was prepared —within the framework of the sixty-fourth meeting of the Presiding Officers of the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean— as part of the preparations for the sixty-seventh session of the Commission on the Status of Women, the priority theme of which was “Innovation and technological change and education in the digital era to achieve gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls.” The purpose of this document and the recommendations it contains is not only to advance towards the achievement of gender equality and sustainable deve…

Advances in care policies in Latin America and the Caribbean: towards a care society with gender equality

The commitments made over the last 45 years have led to the development of a robust Regional Gender Agenda in which women’s rights and gender equality are recognized as central and cross-cutting elements of all State action geared toward strengthening democracy and enabling a new style of sustainable development with equality. The right to care, understood as the right to receive care, to provide care and to exercise self-care, is part of the human rights already recognized in international covenants and treaties that benefit all people. The right to care also implies the recognition of the va…