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OAS CONFERENCE HIGHLIGHTS NEED FOR TRAINING
OF WOMEN FOR POLITICAL LEADERSHIP

Inter-American Commission of Women (CIM) President Yadira Henriquez de Sánchez Baret has called on political parties, labor unions and similar groups in the Americas to organize programs to train women for leadership and a more active role in politics.

She was addressing participants at a special Organization of American States (OAS) Permanent Council session in Washington November 25 on women’s participation in political processes. The Conference, organized by the Permanent Council in conjunction with CIM and the OAS Unit for the Promotion of Democracy, included panel discussions that examined: The current situation of women in political processes; Accomplishments and challenges facing women in politics; and Promoting full and equal participation of women in politics.

In her first official act since being elected in October to lead the OAS specialized agency, Henriquez de Sánchez Baret, who is also Secretary of State for Women’s Affairs in the Dominican Republic, noted the need for studies to identify specific barriers hindering or restricting women’s involvement in politics. “The media must also help eliminate stereotypes of men and women through public awareness campaigns highlighting the diversity of women in various societies, and their real contribution to development.”

Noting how laws also sometimes perpetuate prejudice against women, the CIM President cited as well certain social practices laws have not tackled. She said such problems stem from “notions of femininity entrenched both in laws and in popular thinking that tolerate and allow violations of the inalienable right to life and to physical safety and security.”

The Permanent Council Chairman, Grenada’s Ambassador Denis Antoine, opened the meeting declaring: “It is women who would best present their vision for their own future, and therefore, they are and must be actively involved and respected in the political processes of governance, social development and economic strengthening.”

He added: “Women’s empowerment and the full participation of women in political processes strengthens the ability of countries to grow, to reduce poverty, govern safely, and ensure human security.”


OAS Assistant Secretary General Luigi Einaudi welcomed the participants to the Organization, and lamented that although more and more women make up the workforce, women are still very much underrepresented in government and in elective offices.

Among the panelists surveying the status of women’s participation in politics, Mayra Buvinic, Chief of the Inter-American Development Bank’s Social Development Unit, linked exclusion of women to persistent inequality and structural poverty, pointing also to an “inexplicable paradox” where surveys “confirmed that people believed women find it easier to enter the political arena than the labor arena.”

Joan Caivano, Deputy to the President of Inter-American Dialogue, reported that “women’s presence in Latin America and the Caribbean has increased since the 1970, but this increase lags behinds the increase they have made in education.” And this applied to private and public sector alike, she asserted.

Richard Matland, Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Houston, offered statistics showing Scandinavian countries to lead the world in terms of women in politics. He explained: “It has a lot to do with the electoral institutions they have and the active role that women have played in taking advantage of those institutions.”

Only 6 per cent of Brazil’s National Congress are women, Benedita da Silva of Rio de Janeiro, the lone woman among Brazil’s 27 state governors, told the participants, explaining the challenges despite the increasing number of women getting into politics. She said only 30 of the 513 deputies in the Chamber are women, and only 6 women are among the 81 senators. She lamented that, “Unfortunately, these numbers do not reflect our effective participation in our country’s life.”

Pointing to efforts to redress the past injustices in her country, Argentine Senator Mabel Muller said a quota law introduced in 1991 required 30 per cent of National Deputies to be women. That law was first invoked in 1993, making Argentina the first Latin American country to enact such a measure.

Viewing the glass as “half full,” Mexican Senator Cecilia Romero Castillo, who chairs the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations with Latin America, noted some achievement with more women joining political parties at a younger age as well as efforts by government and political parties alike towards meeting quota requirements of 30 per cent of political candidates being women.

Salvadorian Senator Gloria Salguero Gross, a Deputy in the Central American Parliament, declared she was “convinced that all the underdevelopment our countries experience can be attributed to the prevailing marginalization of women.”

Belize Ambassador Lisa Shoman, who moderated that panel, pointed to the need for some of the studies that were cited to be updated to reflect more broadly the challenges women face in Caribbean countries.

Chaired by El Salvador’s Ambassador to the OAS Margarita Escobar, the third panel looked at the promotion of full and equal participation for women in politics, with Irene Natividad of the Global Summit of Women highlighting the need for ongoing public education campaigns to make the case as to why women running for public office need support. “Sometimes the challenges that face women who run for public office are based on old cultural perceptions that are harder to change than it is to change party rules, but they must be dealt with.”

For her part, Marisa Rivera-Albert, President of the US-based National Hispanic Leadership Institute, welcomed the fact that women in the United States were playing an increasingly decisive role in determining who occupies the White House. “But we must not rest until a woman holds the key to the White House,” she stressed.

In concluding remarks, Elizabeth Spehar, Executive Coordinator of the Unit for the Promotion of Democracy (UPD)underscored the insight gained from the experience, stating that it would be very important to the future work of the OAS. She announced that the UPD is about to embark on an all-country hemispheric survey of campaign financing and how it affects women’s participation.

Executive Secretary of the CIM, Carmen Lomellin noted that for all their stated open door policies, political parties still do not readily accept women in their upper echelons. She underscored the need to break down such barriers to access for women, stating that women are “not a minority group. We are full partners in this journey called life.”

Reference: E-235/02