See photo gallery (7 November 2012) The Forty-eighth Meeting of the Presiding Officers of the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean was opened today at the ECLAC headquarters in Santiago, Chile, in the presence of Ministers, Deputy Ministers and other government representatives in charge of gender equality policies in the region, as well as international officials and members of civil society.
The opening ceremony was led by Antonio Prado, Deputy Executive Secretary of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), and Eleonora Menicucci, Minister of the Secretariat of Policies for Women of Brazil, in her capacity as Chair of the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean.
"We are counting on the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean to strengthen State initiatives and capacities to mainstream policies that promote the economic autonomy of women" - these were the words of Antonio Prado about this subsidiary body of ECLAC that periodically gathers together the region's governments to analyse compliance with regional and international agreements on gender equality.
Mr. Prado told the senior officials "You have taken on a major challenge for the forthcoming Conference, namely to take a gender approach to the issues of innovation, productive development and use of and access to new technologies for women's economic empowerment".
The 12th session of the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean will be held in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, from 14 to 18 October 2013, and its key theme will be the economic empowerment of women and information and communications technologies (ICTs) within the framework of the information society. The most recent sessions of the Conference were held in Quito (2007) and Brasilia (2010).
The Minister of the Secretariat of Policies for Women of Brazil, Eleonora Menicucci, stated that countries should use the upcoming year to make the most of two major opportunities for progress in applying women's rights in the region: the Conference in the Dominican Republic and the first Regional Conference on Population and Development in Latin America and the Caribbean (another subsidiary body of ECLAC), which is scheduled to be held in Uruguay.
Ms. Menicucci also underscored the need to mainstream the gender approach decisively within the region's governments, as "some governmental representatives remain unfamiliar with international instruments that protect wome's rights".
Besides Ms. Menicucci, other participants included Beatriz Ramírez, National Director of the National Women's Institute of the Social Development Ministry of Uruguay, Carolina Schmidt, Minister of the National Women's Service in Chile, Alejandrina Germán, Minister for Women of the Dominican Republic, Marcia Ramírez, Minister for the Family, Adolescence and Childhood of Nicaragua, Gloria Rubín, Minister for Women in Paraguay, and Marcela Huaita, Deputy Minister for Women and Vulnerable Populations of Peru.
The meeting was also attended by María Alexandra Ocles, President of the Transition Commission to the Council of Women and Gender Equality of Ecuador, Lorena Flores, Technical Director of the National Women's Institute of Costa Rica, Patricia Wohlers, Deputy Director-General for International Affairs of the National Women's Institute of Mexico, Irma Quiroa, Presidential Secretary for Women of the Presidential Secretariat for Women in Guatemala, Angélica Cuadra, Head of the International Relations and Cooperation Unit of the Salvadoran Institute for Women's Development, and Luz Marina Vergara, Head of International Technical Cooperation of the National Women's Institute of Panama.
At the various sessions, the government representatives will analyse the process of implementing gender-based public policies in the various countries, and will identify the main challenges they face in the political and institutional spheres, as well as the need to mainstream gender equality in the region's governmental processes, such as the Rio+20 agenda and the Ministerial Conference on the Information Society.
Furthermore, the meeting that will finish on Thursday 8 November will also present various studies on the impact of ICTs on women's well-being, mainstreaming of the gender perspective and gender equality.
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