The Americas and the Caribbean

n keynote remarks to a group of women leaders, Organization of American States (OAS) Secretary General José Miguel Insulza highlighted persistent problems of violence against women as well as poverty and discrimination. The OAS Secretary General was addressing a group of more than fifty women at a forum on Democracy and Women’s Leadership in the Americas.
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THE Organisation of American States’ (OAS) sponsoring of the multi-national project - “Promoting the participation of women in politics for good governance and democracy” - is further demonstrating its commitment to helping systematically remove the barriers to political power in countries across the region.
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On the heels of Laura Chinchilla's victory in the Costa Rican presidential election and Evo Morales's appointing women to half of his cabinet positions, the Christian Science Monitor has picked up on an interesting trend in South America, increased female participation in the halls of power. South and Central America have also been showing progress down-ballot. The most recent statistics show that, across the region, between 2000 and 2006, the percentage of women legislators increased 35 percent (from 14 to 19 percent).

In a country where machismo is still the rule, Sandra Torres doesn't cut the demure figure of past first ladies. She doesn't host social events or boost charities. What she does do is give orders -- lots of them.Torres oversees President Alvaro Colom's huge state program of social assistance, which involves anti-poverty handouts to hundreds of thousands of Guatemalans. She oversees the work of several Cabinet members. Now there's talk that Torres will try to succeed her husband in the presidency in elections late next year. The talk has raised a flurry of heated debate.

On Oct. 3 Brazil could become the third country in the subregion to elect a woman president within the space of just a few years. Dilma Rousseff, the candidate of the governing Workers' Party (PT), is ahead of her closest rival, social democrat José Serra, by 20 points in the polls.

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Hundred years have passed since the initiative to highlight the achievements of women in the world was launched. And yet in the 21st century we are still witnessing many social, legal and physical constraints for women to use their potential and to exercise their rights. The list of 100 examples of inequalities between women and men existing in the EU today, prepared by the European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE), demonstrates an obvious reason why Europe must invest in gender equality not only among the Member States but in its external relations as well.

With President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner’s win in Sunday’s Argentine’s election all but assured and a woman leading the largest country in Latin America, it might appear that the political glass ceiling in the hemisphere has finally been cracked.

But from Buenos Aires to Washington, D.C., women still have a long way to go to achieve parity in politics, according to recently completed gender studies and political analysts.

8 March 2012 - Women in Latin America continue to make political gains but they are still far from reaching parity with men in terms of political representation, according to International IDEA.

New York – Around 100 officials from Mexico and other Latin American countries, indigenous peoples’ representatives and non-governmental organizations gathered today in New York during the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Peoples (7-18 May) to discuss how to increase indigenous peoples’ political partici