Changes in the urban female labour market

This article seeks to make an orderly summary of the information on urban female labour in Latin America in the 1990s and thus make a contribution to an updated diagnosis of the female labour market to help serve in the formulation of policies for women. It looks at the past evolution of female labour, analyses the effects of the crisis of the early 1980s on this sector of labour, and reviews the changes that have taken place in it, which have undermined the validity of some myths on this subject. It also looks at some critical aspects of female labour, such as income, occupational segmentatio…

Fiscal adjustment and social spending

The external and internal imbalances that appeared in the early 1980s, together with the adjustment and stabilization policies applied throughout that decade in Latin America, juxtaposed the need to reduce the fiscal deficit with the need to make up for the loss of income sustained by the most vulnerable groups of the population as a consequence of the external debt crisis. This article examines patterns of social expenditure in a number of countries in the region, in an effort to determine how these policies affected the level and composition of social spending and, hence, influenced social p…

The informal sector and poverty in Latin America

Informal economic activities are an important source of jobs in the region. The question as to how this phenomenon should be interpreted and the nature of its implications are, however, a subject of controversy. Some analysts regard the existence of the informal economy as a consequence of insufficient economic growth; they contend that it represents a survival strategy and, as such, an involuntary refuge for the poor. Others argue that it is the result of changes in the labour market brought about by government regulation and see it as offering attractive job alternatives that may yield a hig…

A cultural view of the ECLAC proposals

This article argues that the ECLAC proposal for changing production patterns with social equity should take account of the cultural features of the region's societies. It therefore examines the ECLAC proposal from. a cultural standpoint, with special attention to the links between citizenship, economic development and modernity (section II);. It then analyses the processes of internationalization of culture, the relation between cultural identity and citizenship, and the impact of the processes of internationalization of culture on the region (section III);. It goes on to examine one of t…

The cultural industry and new codes of modernity

Within the context of the globalization of the economy, communication and culture and the transition towards societies based on information and knowledge, the sustained development of the cultural industry stands out as a priority means for the articulation of society. For at least the last three decades, culture has been increasingly linked with the growth of the social communication media. Indeed, the cultural industry is becoming a strategic sector for competitiveness, employment, consensus-building, the style of politics and the circulation of information and knowledge. This growing weight…

Guía para la identificación y formulación de proyectos de salud = Guidelines for the identification and formulation of health projects

Policies for competitiveness

The progress made by the countries of the region in their stabilization processes has led policy-makers and entrepreneurs to pay increasing attention to the competitiveness of production activities and the factors and policies that determine it. The stability attained has clearly revealed the levels of some real variables which were hard to quantify in conditions of extreme price variations. This greater transparency of the market conditions, together with the growing competition resulting from the processes of greater trade openness, has brought out the strengths and weaknesses of the region&…