Note for Equality N° 16: 20 years of the Beijing Declaration and Plataform for Action
The situation of women in Latin America and the Caribbean has improved since 1995, when 189 countries signed the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action. Nonetheless progress has been mixed, heterogeneous, and inequality. Discrimination continues to affect many women in the region, preventing the achievement of full autonomy, which is fundamental to ensuring the respect, exercise and enjoyment of their human rights and to achieve equality.
Challenges:
Autonomy in decision-making:
• Strengthen gender mainstreaming.
• Advance in the legal and institutional framework to ensure that women and men have equal access to all areas of decisionmaking, not only at the state level, but also in the business, labor and union sectors.
Economic autonomy:
• Overcoming gaps in employment and wages, insisting on legislative developments and the creation of a culture of equality.
• Advance in policies that establish shared responsibility in the household and care tasks.
Physical autonomy:
• Strengthen policies to address violence against women in the area of prevention, education and access to justice, in addition to the sanction and assistance to victims.
• Ensure access to public reproductive health services and overcoming gaps in service delivery to guarantee the reproductive rights of all women, and in particular the poorest women.