Gender Equality: Americas Quarterly Summer 2012

Gender Equality: Political Backrooms, Corporate Boardrooms, and Classrooms

How far has the region progressed in women’s rights and gender equality? The Summer 2012 issue of Americas Quarterly, to be released on Thursday, July 26, shows how despite impressive achievements in access to education and political representation, women continue to lag behind men in representation on corporate boards, in labor markets, in political party decision-making positions, and in judicial systems.

The Summer AQ looks at the barriers that remain and why achieving equality is a political, economic, and moral imperative. Click here to access AQ.

In this Issue:

AQ’s signature “charticle” compares women’s representation on corporate boards in developed and developing countries, details which sectors perform better in the inclusion of women, and shows how greater representation means greater returns for companies.

Girls’ education has long been touted as a silver bullet to poverty alleviation and greater gender parity in the workforce. But Hugo Ñopo of the Inter-American Development Bank shows that just increasing girls’ enrollment in school isn’t enough. In Latin America, cultural norms and gender stereotypes, especially in the math and science, remain and have led to wage gaps between men and women.

Former president of Chile and UN Women Executive Director Michelle Bachelet discusses why violence against women should be seen as a development issue, and how empowering women economically can break those patterns. U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women’s Issues Melanne Verveer explains how and why the State Department has turned women and girls’ development into a strategic foreign policy objective of the U.S. government.

In judicial systems and in politics, the situation is a little better, but still far from fair. Using data from the UN, Sital Kalantry of Cornell Law School notes that Latin America now ranks second in the developing world for representation of women in judicial systems. Magda Hinojosa of Arizona State University shows that, despite increases in women’s representation in national legislatures and the string of female presidents in Latin America in recent years, women remain effectively barred from representative politics at the local and party levels.

Also in this Issue:

Haiti expert and Partners in Health founder Paul Farmer warns of the risk of a cholera pandemic in the region.

Lourdes Melgar analyzes the future of state-owned PEMEX in the sexenio under President Enrique Peña Nieto.

Matias Spektor describes Brazil’s shifting views on humanitarian intervention in the wake of conflict in Libya and Syria.

And David Tebaldi, who has lead people-to-people exchanges to Cuba over the past several administrations, reflects on recent changes on the island and in U.S. policy.

Press Inquiries: Contact Adriana La Rotta at alarotta@as-coa.org or (212) 277-8384.

Americas Quarterly: The Policy Journal for Our Hemisphere is the only magazine dedicated to policy analysis and debate of economics, finance, social development, and politics in the Western Hemisphere. Launched in 2007, AQ reaches high-level policymakers in Washington DC and throughout the region, top-level businessmen and women investing in the Americas, and new leaders in the worlds of finance, business, politics, and the media.

Visit us online at AmericasQuarterly.org and connect with us on Twitter (@AmerQuarterly) and at facebook.com/AmericasQuarterly.