On August 12-15, the United Nations’ main intergovernmental forum on women’s rights and gender equality in the region will take place in Mexico City.

In the presence of senior authorities from the Government of Mexico and the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), the headquarters agreement for holding the XVI Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean on August 12-15 in Mexico City was signed this Friday, June 13, at the Tlatelolco University Cultural Center.

Participating in the ceremony were the Undersecretary of Foreign Affairs of Mexico, María Teresa Mercado; the Executive Secretary of ECLAC, José Manuel Salazar-Xirinachs; the country’s Secretary for Women, Citlalli Hernández; and the Head of Government of Mexico City, Clara Marina Brugada Molina. They reinforced the XVI Regional Conference’s central discussion topic, which is “political, economic, social, cultural and environmental transformations as a means of advancing the care society and gender equality.”

This formal event was also attended by the Regional Director for the Americas and the Caribbean of the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women), María-Noel Vaeza; the Director of ECLAC’s Division for Gender Affairs, Ana Güezmes García; the acting Director of ECLAC’s Subregional Headquarters in Mexico, Jorge Mario Martínez-Piva; and the United Nations Resident Coordinator in Mexico, Peter Grohmann.

Other national authorities present in the auditorium included Mexico’s Undersecretary for Latin America and the Caribbean at the Secretariat of Foreign Affairs (SRE), Raquel Serur Smeke; the national Senator for Guanajuato and Chair of the Senate Committee for Gender Equality, Martha Lucía Mícher Camarena; and the Federal Deputy of Chalco and Chair of the Gender Equality Committee in the LXVI Legislature, Anaís Miriam Burgos Hernández, to name a few.

The Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean – a subsidiary body of ECLAC that has been meeting since 1977 – is the main regional intergovernmental forum within the United Nations system focused on women's rights and gender equality. The Conference is organized by ECLAC as the Technical Secretariat, and since 2020, in coordination with UN Women.

On behalf of Mexican Foreign Secretary Juan Ramón de la Fuente, the Undersecretary of Foreign Affairs, María Teresa Mercado, stated that Mexico is working to put women at the center of public decisions, and to ensure that all actions contribute to guaranteeing substantive equality. 

She stressed that Mexican humanism reminds us that no society prospers if it leaves more than half its population behind, which is why eliminating the gender gap is a moral imperative. On these grounds, the country has been a pioneer in promoting an agenda for equality in the region and in the world, pursuing goals such as wage equality and equitable access to technology, she specified. 

Mercado indicated that the feminist foreign policy that Mexico is carrying out ensures that all Mexican diplomatic efforts contribute to guaranteeing this substantive equality for all, based on the recognition that women in Latin America and the Caribbean spend more than triple the amount of time men do to tend to unpaid domestic and care work.

“Today, the Regional Conference on Women is part of Latin America and the Caribbean’s cultural heritage. Since 1977, its meetings have generated a unique Regional Gender Agenda in the world, which serves as a progressive, cumulative and multi-stakeholder road map for guiding countries’ public policies. It is a global pacesetter, for example, as the first intergovernmental forum that recognized the right to care and, more recently, embraced ECLAC’s proposal to move towards the care society, a paradigm that the region seeks to extend to the world and, most importantly, is expressed in care policies and care systems in our countries,” ECLAC’s Executive Secretary, José Manuel Salazar-Xirinachs, underscored.

The Mexican Government’s Secretary for Women, Citlalli Hernández Mora, indicated that the organization of this Conference “gives us pride and strengthens us as a country, at a time when in the region and in the world there is much to be said, much to debate and much to contrast between spaces and moments in which rights are being questioned, and a country and a city like ours, where progress is being made and is being furthered.”

The Secretary added that “this is a complex time in the world where diverse anti-rights, conservative forces are trying to rollback a decades-long struggle by many feminists and many women and men who have aspired to a more egalitarian society. They are even attempting to reverse regulatory advances and the institutions built to promote substantive equality, women’s autonomy and sexual and reproductive rights.”

Meanwhile, the Head of Government of Mexico City, Clara Marina Brugada Molina, stated: “We know that this Conference is going to have very significant outcomes on the issues that interest us. We also know that there are very significant challenges in the region: violence, poverty, economic dependence, the unjust burden of care, but I am sure that at this Conference we are going to have many enriching contributions for building a great future. We hope that here, at this Conference, the agenda for women’s future and power can be forged.”

The authorities pointed up the Conference as a unique space for dialogue and agreement between governments, civil society, academia, international organizations and other actors for moving towards gender equality and the care society in the region. This gathering also seeks to contribute to regional and global multilateral processes, reaffirming Latin America and the Caribbean’s proactive role in the face of current challenges.