The document What kind of State? What kind of equality? analyses the progress of gender equality in the region 15 years after the approval of the Beijing Platform for Action, 10 years after the drafting of the Millennium Development Goals and 3 years after the adoption of the Quito Consensus at the tenth session of the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean, held in 2007. It also examines the achievements made and challenges faced by governments in light of the interaction between the State, the market and families as social institutions built on the foundation of policies, laws, and customs and habits which, together, establish the conditions for renewing or perpetuating gender and social hierarchies.¹

Although the study focuses on Latin America and the Caribbean, some of the indicators are compared with those of Portugal and Spain, which are members of the Gender Equality Observatory for Latin America and the Caribbean and participate in the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean as member States of ECLAC. Particular mention is also made of certain policies on gender parity and reconciliation of caregiving and productive work, in order to draw comparisons with equality processes under way at the global level and bring attention to the region’s increasing dialogue with other countries in this area.

The State’s role in promoting social equality is the crux of the debate, as affirmed in the document Time for equality: closing gaps, opening trails (ECLAC 2010a). This is a key concept in a development agenda shared by various social actors: it assumes that women will be incorporated into the labour market under the same conditions as men, that their rights as citizens will be recognized, that they will participate fully in decision-making at all levels of society, that their physical integrity will be respected and that they will have control over their own bodies.

The incorporation of women into the labour market under the same conditions as men presupposes an analysis of their social and symbolic role in society and a strategic change therein. This will entail redistributing the unpaid workload associated with the reproduction and sustainment of human life as well as dismantling the power system that subjugates women both in private (thereby guaranteeing them the right to a life free from violence and the right to free choice in matters of, and conditions relating to, reproduction) and in public (through their equitable representation at all levels of decision-making in society).

Progress in gender equality is directly related to advances in women’s economic autonomy, such as control over material goods and intellectual resources and the ability to make decisions regarding family assets and income. It is also closely linked with physical autonomy as an essential requirement for overcoming the barriers to the exercise of sexuality, to women’s physical integrity and to free choice in matters of reproduction, as well as with parity in decision-making.

The second section of the document depicts the situation in Latin America and the Caribbean and the progress made by countries in policies, plans and programmes relating to the assessment of the application of the Beijing Platform for Action and, more specifically, the comparative indicators for the countries of the region regarding physical and economic autonomy and decisionmaking as seen in the Gender Equality Observatory for Latin America and the Caribbean of ECLAC.

On this occasion, the analysis of the comparative indicators serves as a progress report of the Gender Equality Observatory for Latin America and the Caribbean, a tool that draws attention to the achievements and challenges in the region in the last decade and reveals substantive progress in the development of indicators and statisticalproduction systems to measure inequality between men and women.² The Observatory was established in response to one of the mandates of the Quito Consensus (2007) and has made it possible to have new national and regional data on women’s economic autonomy, physical autonomy and decision-making autonomy.³ This interagency effort is coordinated by ECLAC and supported by the substantive and financial contributions of the United Nations International Research and Training Institute for the Advancement of Women (INSTRAW), United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Spanish International Cooperation Agency for Development (AECID) and Ibero-American Secretariat (SEGIB).

The third section of the document addresses paid work and the impact of unpaid work on women in formal and informal employment, the connection between unpaid work and macroeconomic policies and the role of the State in promoting equality and of public policies in the redistribution of unpaid work. These policies are understood to influence production regulation and wages as well as well-being through social welfare and protection measures.

The economic implications of unpaid work and households’ focus on social reproduction provide a key to understanding the relationships between production and the redistribution of wealth. Hence, the analysis attempts to draw attention to the different dimensions of household work, not only as a political demand but also as an invitation to debate on rules for redistribution, modes of production and the type of relationship between production and social reproduction.

The document also highlights the importance of States’ being responsible overall for the respect, protection and fulfilment of human rights by interlinking social, political, economic and cultural rights and coordinating the executive, legislative and judicial branches in order to design and implement universal public policies based on the assumption that labour policies are indissolubly linked to the policies and mechanisms needed to transform social production into a collective undertaking.

It also emphasizes the need to gear policies towards reconciling work and family life, and proposes that States and society overall strengthen initiatives for women to overcome obstacles to greater mobility and better career prospects without discrimination, and thus gain access to full citizenship.

In sum, the document stresses the progress made in women’s economic and social rights and in their key political role, while at the same time offering data that suggest that new inequalities persist or have emerged. Far from suggesting that there have been linear advances in the region, these data trace a complex map that denotes overlapping inequalities in women’s economic, political and social development. And this map underscores the vicissitudes, the impasses and the resistance to change.

The diagnosis and analysis set forth in this study take into account the structural heterogeneity of the economies, the cultural diversity of its people and specific territorial features, since these can sometimes cause certain factors - population and territory size, the impact of natural disasters on the economy, the availability of natural resources and the type of institutional development - to have differentiated effects on the status of women in each country, warranting further analysis from the national or subregional perspective.

Last, the section that calls for an agenda on gender equality policies refers to short- and medium-term policies centred on the redistribution of paid and unpaid and care work and highlights the importance of including women’s voices through their democratic presence in the decision-making sphere as well as the importance of recognizing the women’s movement, women entrepreneurs and businesswomen in dialogue and governance forums and in social and trade union organizations.

1. The Fourth World Conference on Women was held in Beijing in 1995, and the Platform for Action adopted on that occasion is the subject of a 15-year review entitled Review of the implementation of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action and the outcome of the twenty-third special session of the General Assembly (2000) in Latin American and Caribbean countries (ECLAC, 2009c).
2. See http://www.cepal.cl/oig.
3. At the tenth session of the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean, held in Quito in 2007, the ECLAC member States requested the creation of a gender equality observatory.