Photo: Camilo Hdo, Flickr

The past 20 years have seen significant progress in gender equality in Latin America and the Caribbean. Having said that, there remain persistent inequalities in the region's countries, according to a new ECLAC study of the situation of women entitled Construyendo autonomía. Compromisos e indicadores de género (Building autonomy. Commitments and gender indicators).

“This inequality and lack of autonomy are mainly the result of injustice and the improper distribution of power, income and time between men and women, as well as the lack of recognition of women’s rights on the part of the political and economic elites”, according to the document coordinated by Sonia Montaño, Director of the ECLAC Division for Gender Affairs, and Karina Batthyány, a consultant for the Division.

The publication includes four studies on the national gender equality plans of Bolivia, Chile, Guatemala and Uruguay, which have arisen as part of the regional and international agreements and commitments undertaken by the countries. First there is a regional overview, followed by the case studies.

The analysis used indicators adopted by the Gender equality observatory for Latin America and the Caribbean, which has ECLAC as its Secretariat, based on three dimensions of autonomy: physical, decision-making and economic.

According to the study, at least 14 of the region's countries have achieved significant progress in devising and implementing national equal opportunity plans in the past decade.

Colombia, Costa Rica, Honduras, Panama and Venezuela have the region's oldest equality laws. The most recent laws are those in Mexico, Nicaragua, Peru and Uruguay.

The study indicates that the greatest progress has been made in terms of the growing presence of women in decision-making positions, the fight against poverty and policies aimed at eliminating violence.

In contrast, one of the areas of least progress for countries is women's relationship with the environment and the media. Similarly, the increase in the proportion of women in paid employment has not been accompanied by policies aimed at eliminating labour-market discrimination.

Other issues pending include increasing social protection, access to health services (including reproductive health) and the quality of education.

The study also proposes some indicators for evaluating public policies. According to the authors, such indicators could be incorporated in the monitoring work of the Gender equality observatory for Latin America and the Caribbean, particularly in the sphere of economic autonomy.

The newly proposed indicators include the rate of female participation in economic activity; the unemployment rate by sex; distribution of employed population in low-productivity sectors by sex; total workload; participation rates of men and women in domestic activities; existence of social security in paid domestic work; estimated income gaps by sex; poverty in female-headed households; and the distribution of population with their own income by sex, ethnic group and so forth.

Lastly, as part of the Thirty-Fourth Session of ECLAC, due to be held from 27 to 31 August 2012 in El Salvador, the organization will launch a new document on the situation of the female population entitled El Estado frente a la autonomía de las mujeres (The State and Women's Autonomy). This publication will continue the reflection that began with the 2010 publication What kind of State? What kind of equality?