The Diplomat
The Ibero-American General Secretariat (SEGIB) and the UN agency for gender equality and women’s empowerment (UN Women) have launched a joint website to promote equality between women and men and provide data and legislative information that drives the repeal of discriminatory laws and the development of adequate legal protections.
The two organizations yesterday presented their new website www.leyesigualdadgeneroiberoamerica.org, which will address economic and gender rights in the 22 Ibero-American countries. The event took place during the XV Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean, held in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
The virtual platform, which is supported by the Spanish Cooperation, offers legislative information to monitor the progress of the countries in the region in terms of reforming and repealing national laws that directly or indirectly could generate discrimination linked to women’s autonomy and economic empowerment.
This website allows information to be filtered by country and sub-region, by type of legislation, status of ratification of binding international treaties and key areas for women’s economic empowerment in eight key areas: gender equality and non-discrimination, freedom of choice of employment, equal pay, maternity protection, paternity leave, social security, care and unpaid domestic work.
In addition, the site also provides information on the status of ratification of key international treaties for women’s autonomy and economic empowerment, presents regional and national data and recommendations by country, and brings together resources for the general public.
“The added value of this project lies in its transformative potential, as it is a tool that makes visible laws and public policies that contribute to the advancement of women’s rights in a key area such as economic empowerment and at the Ibero-American level,” said SEGIB’s Gender Coordinator, Marta Carballo, during the presentation of the website. “To monitor these norms is to work to break the structural inequality of the system,” she added.
For her part, the director of the UN Women Regional Office for Latin America and the Caribbean, María Noel Vaeza, stated that “laws play a fundamental role in achieving legal equality in the first instance and in promoting policies and measures that act on inequalities, recognize the specific needs of women and promote real equality.”
