A Call to Action to Boost Women’s Leadership and Parity Democracy in the Americas

International and regional organizations, with special emphasis on those comprising the Inter-American Task Force on Women’s Leadership, as well as the feminist and women’s movement, have highlighted that the presence of women in key decision-making spaces is essential to ensuring that the response and recovery from these crises are sustainable and do not deepen pre-existing gaps1. They have also stressed that the achievement of women’s rights and the participation of women in decision-making processes are fundamental to democratic governance. The aspiration is to achieve a “parity democracy” …

The care society: A horizon for sustainable recovery with gender equality

The multiple crises of recent years have shown that the current development model is unsustainable and fails to address the structural gaps that affect the vast majority of the population of Latin America and the Caribbean. Against this backdrop, a comprehensive and cross-cutting approach is needed to halt the enormous setbacks that jeopardize achievements of the targets set in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Regional Gender Agenda. It is also urgent to implement the structural change in the development model that ECLAC has been advocating for over a decade. To avoid wideni…

Annotated provisional agenda. Fifteenth session of the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean

Report of the Special Meeting of the Presiding Officers of the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean

Women’s autonomy and gender equality at the centre of climate action in Latin America and the Caribbean

This document was prepared —within the framework of the sixty-second 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-sixth session of the Commission on the Status of Women, whose priority theme was “Achieving gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls in the context of climate change, environmental and disaster risk reduction policies and programmes”. The purpose of this document and the recommendations it contains is not only to advance towards the achievement of gender equality…

Provisional agenda. Sixty-third meeting of the Presiding Officers of the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean

Addressing gender disparities in education and employment: A necessary step for achieving sustainable development in the Caribbean

Considering the vital importance of gender equality to development and the specific promise of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development to leave no one behind, girls and boys should be provided with equal opportunities to achieve their fullest potential as promoted in specific Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and related targets. Noting that the 2020–2029 decade has been termed the “Decade of Action” for sustainable development, there is the need for the Caribbean to urgently address its human capital development challenge even as the subregion deals with many economic, social, and envi…

Decentring GDP: Well-being, care and time

In recent years, a number of proposals have highlighted how restrictive it is to use gross domestic product (GDP) as a measure of well-being. This document takes up those criticisms and also showcases the limitations of GDP as a measure of output. What GDP measures and what it excludes is a product of conventions that reflect androcentric biases. The failure to appraise natural resources and non-remunerated services produced by households results in a skewed perspective on the economy that focuses on markets and neglects other processes that are essential to human life. The Latin American and …

Provisional agenda. Fifteenth session of the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean

Child, early and forced marriage and unions: Harmful practices that deepen gender inequality in Latin America and the Caribbean

Child, early and forced marriage and unions are a reality in Latin America and the Caribbean, albeit not a highly visible one. This is a complex phenomenon associated with gender inequalities, violence, poverty, school dropout, adolescent pregnancy and inadequate, limited or non-existent legal and political frameworks, and it puts the present and future of girls and adolescent girls in jeopardy. These practices are both the cause and the consequence of women’s limited physical, economic and decision-making autonomy, and they disproportionally affect girls and adolescent girls in rural areas an…

The Hummingbird Vol. 9 No. 8

Methodological guide on time-use measurements in Latin America and the Caribbean

The region is facing the challenge of increasing the harmonization and comparability of measurements of time use and unpaid work. The methodological differences between the various surveys make it harder to generate regional aggregate data. In view of this, the member countries of the Working Group on Gender Statistics agreed to prepare a methodological document that would collate the experience of the countries of the region and make recommendations for the design of measurement instruments that would make it possible to generate comparable indicators with common regionally agreed-upon method…

Equality at the heart of ECLAC thinking: Ideas, policies and actions from 2008 to 2022

This essay summarizes the main lines of analysis, policy proposals and actions in favour of sustainable development in Latin America and the Caribbean that ECLAC has pursued during the more than 13 years that Alicia Bárcena served as its Executive Secretary.…

The Hummingbird Vol. 9 No. 7

Breaking the statistical silence to achieve gender equality by 2030: implementing the Information Systems Pillar of the Montevideo Strategy for the implementation of the Regional Gender Agenda within the sustainable development framework by 2030

Annotated index of the position document for the Fifteenth Session of the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean "The Care Society: a Horizon for Sustainable Recovery with gender Equality"

Annotated provisional agenda. Special meeting of the Presiding Officers of the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean

Towards construction of comprehensive care systems in Latin America and the Caribbean: Elements for their implementation

This document, prepared by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) and UN Women, has been conceived to serve as a guiding framework for those involved in the development of comprehensive national Care Systems as a pillar of social protection in the countries of the region. We believe that these systems should be designed from a human rights perspective, with particular emphasis on mainstreaming the gender perspective to achieve care models co-responsible between the State, the market, the community, and families, and between men and women.…

Provisional agenda. Special meeting of the Presiding Officers of the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean

End of assignment report Alicia Bárcena 2008–2022

This document contains a report on the term in office of Alicia Bárcena as Executive Secretary of ECLAC (2008–2022), by area of work of the Commission.…