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SPECIAL OAS SESSION UNDERLINES NEED TO DISMANTLE
BARRIERS TO WOMEN’S FULL PARTICIPATION IN DECISION-MAKING

Ministers of government and other top female officials from member states have reaffirmed the position that while progress has been made towards equality for women in the Americas, efforts must be intensified across the Hemisphere to ensure this goal is fully met.

This was the focus of a special meeting of the Organization of American States (OAS) Permanent Council today, where participants examined the progress and challenges experienced by member states in formulating and implementing policies and strategies to incorporate a gender perspective.

Women’s participation in all areas of a democratic society is vital to “the interests of the democratic system, with women participating in political institutions on an equal footing,” declared El Salvador’s Foreign Minister Maria Eugenia Brizuela de Ávila. ”We must give women an optimal role in order to reduce poverty,” she added. The Minister also outlined the priority her country places on incorporating a gender perspective into policy at the national and community levels.

Trinidad and Tobago’s Minister of Planning and Development Camille Robinson Regis, surveying the progress in women’s participation in high-level decision making positions, reported that in Trinidad and Tobago—and in the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) countries as a whole—significant progress has been attained. She said that “despite this progress, far greater strides need to be made to dismantle the barriers to gender equality in political power and leadership” that still exist in many areas and regions of the world.

“Achieving the goal of equal participation of women and men in decision-making will provide a balance that more accurately reflects the composition of society,” she asserted, quoting from the 1995 Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action issued at the Fourth World Conference on Women that “set the goal of 30 per cent for women in national decision-making positions as a milestone toward the ultimate objective of 50 per cent.”

Permanent Council Chairman Miguel Ruiz-Cabañas, the Mexican Permanent Representative to the OAS, inaugurated the session along with CIM Vice President and Associate Director Status of Women Canada Florence Ievers and El Salvador’s Ambassador to the OAS Margarita Escobar.

Supported by the Inter-American Commission of Women (CIM), the Unit for the Promotion of Democracy (UPD) and the Secretariat for the Summit Process, the meeting heard as well presentations from Irene Klinger, Executive Secretary of the Secretariat for the Summit Process; Elizabeth Spehar, Executive Coordinator of the OAS Unit for the Promotion of Democracy; Dr. Mariana Yepes, Prosecutor General of Ecuador; Dr. Graciela Rosso, Argentina’s Deputy Health Minister; and Carmen Lomellin, CIM Executive Secretary.

Another special meeting opened today as well, bringing government ministers together with senior officials responsible for women’s affairs to examine the importance of free trade and the economic empowerment of women to promote gender equality and combat poverty.

This three-day Inter-American Commission of Women (CIM) event is the second ministerial gathering convened under an OAS General Assembly mandate to encourage implementation of the Inter-American Program for the Promotion of Women’s Human Rights and Gender Equity and Equality and to advance Summits of the Americas preparation and follow-up.

Reference: E-064/04