The 11th Regional Conference on Latin American and Caribbean Women closes Friday with the approval of the "Brasilia Consensus," which highlights top challenges of women.
For four days, about 800 women from 33 countries and representatives of 100 NGOs worldwide met in the Brazilian capital to talk about diverse gender issues and the need for a new social pact allowing for gender equity in labor.
A special session, "Haiti and Chile: (Re)Building Equity," featured authorities and representatives from NGOs and the UN who agreed that the devastating quakes that rocked those two countries early this year have chiefly affected women and children.
Meanwhile, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva welcomed a representation of the different delegations, and affirmed that social programs are better channeled through women, according to a press release from the Economic Commission for Latin America (ECLAC).
ECLAC executive secretary Alicia Barcena thanked Lula for his generosity and support for holding the conference, and gave him the document, which proposes a new social consensus on the total redistribution of labor between men and women, aimed at facilitating women's access to the labor market as part of their human rights.
