UN Women and SEGIB present study on discriminatory legislation on women's economic empowerment
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UN Women and the Ibero-American General Secretariat (SEGIB), within the framework of the joint initiative to promote the derogation and reform of laws that discriminate against women's rights, are launching the country fact sheets "Legislation on women's economic empowerment". The documents present a detailed analysis by country that updates and synthesizes the main elements of progress, as well as the pending legislative challenges in the area of autonomy and economic empowerment of women in Ibero-America and the Caribbean.
With the aim of continuing to make progress in the production of knowledge on economic empowerment, and to continue supporting the efforts made by the countries of the region to guarantee gender equality, UN Women and SEGIB have developed an analysis consisting of three documents: a fact sheet for each Ibero-American country, accompanied by a reform agenda that indicates specific proposals for legal reforms at the national level to ensure women's autonomy and economic empowerment, as well as an annex containing the legislative texts on economic empowerment in each of the countries analysed.
The fact sheets have been prepared based on the analysis of primary legislative sources in each country and in accordance with the areas prioritized by the UN Women strategy "Equality before the Law for Women and Girls by 2030", namely: equal pay; recognition of unpaid care work; protection of paid domestic work; parental leave and freedom of choice of employment. The area of social security was added because of its particular significance for the achievement of gender equality in the region.
They are based on the work that both entities have been carrying out together since 2018 to eliminate discriminatory legislation, which resulted in the study "Analysis of discriminatory legislation in Latin America and the Caribbean in terms of women's autonomy and economic empowerment", presented at the meeting "Somos Iberoamérica: Legislando para el empoderamiento económico de las mujeres", organized by the Government of Spain, the Ibero-American General Secretariat (SEGIB) and UN Women, in Madrid in 2018.
UN Women and SEGIB make this tool available to influence the legislative agenda of the countries of Ibero-America and the Caribbean, so that it can serve as an input to promote the reform and/or derogation of laws that directly or indirectly may generate discrimination, and the adoption of regulatory frameworks that promote the autonomy and economic empowerment of women.
The results obtained in the different countries of Ibero-America and the Caribbean are beginning to be presented, with great success, through the generation of debates and high-level conversations at both national and regional levels, as was the case at the XIV Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean, held in Chile in January of this year.