Women’s Ministries Come Together to Strengthen Gender Equality in Latin America

July 1, 2008 (INSTRAW) - Over the past 20 years national mechanisms for the promotion of women has been established throughout Latin America. Despite the progress achieved, they need to be strengthened to ensure their success. Currently, those responsible for these mechanisms are building networks aimed at strengthening their political incidence and making gender equality policies a priority for all Latin American governments.

Those responsible for national gender equality policies, have stressed the need for greater interconnection to strengthen the policies. These alliances aim at positioning women’s interests in the regional agendas of Central America and the Andean Region where networks have been created to establish a greater dialogue on strategic gender issues and to give incentive to greater initiatives at the sub-regional level.

In March 2008, the representatives of the National Gender Mechanisms in the Andean Region (Mecanismos Nacionales de la Mujer en la Región Andina - MNMRA) met in Bolivia to create the “Intergovernmental Network of National Mechanisms for the Advancement of Women in the Andean Region”. The Network will deal with various relevant themes, which include institutional strengthening; women’s political participation; women’s rights, work, and sexual and reproductive health.

During an interview with UN-INSTRAW, Ximena Abarca, President ProTempore of the Andean Network and Executive Director of the National Women’s Council of Ecuador (CONAMU), emphasized that “the Network will focus on strengthening mechanisms by positioning them in the Andean Community of Nations (CAN). The next step will be to integrate gender issues into the CAN programmes and policies for the Andean region”.

In 2005, a similar initiative was launched in Central America through the creation of the Council of Central American Ministers for Women’s Affairs (COMMCA). This Council forms part of the Central American Integration System (SICA) that sets forth, analyzes and makes recommendations on political, economic, social, environmental and cultural issues with the objective of incorporating policies aimed at transforming the situation of women at the regional level.

According to Ileana Rogel, consultant to the COMMCA Technical Secretariat, “an effort is being made to highlight the issue of women’s political participation within the wide range of themes that SICA deals with, and which became a reality through an agreement signed recently by COMMCA, SICA and UN-INSTRAW”.

The results of the Diagnosis on Governance, Gender and the Political Participation of Women in Central America and the Andean Region, carried out by UN-INSTRAW, revealed that national planning and gender policy management mechanisms are an important achievement for the advancement of women. However, after analyzing the situation of mechanisms at the local, national and regional levels, the studies recommended “to join forces to generate a greater articulation amongst these mechanisms”.

With the objective of promoting these types of initiatives and following up on the results of the studies, UN–INSTRAW offered its support to the Andean Network through the dissemination of information and by providing technical support to enrich the dialogue between the Andean and the Central American networks.

Also, the Institute has been working jointly with COMMCA since 2006 through a series of cooperation agreements that will contribute to ensuring adequate response to women’s interests in the SICA.

From:http://www.un-instraw.org/en/media-center/e-news/women-s-ministries-come-together-to-strengthen-gender-equality-in-latin-ame-3.html