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Strengthening Women’s Economic Autonomy: Perspectives from Latin America on an Urgent Agenda

October 7, 2026 | Activity

Twenty-five-person virtual meeting grid showing diverse participants on a video conference with one speaker highlighted by a green border.

Women’s economic autonomy is an enabling condition for the full exercise of their rights and for the construction of more equal, inclusive, and prosperous societies. But it is not merely a matter of equity: promoting women’s full participation in the labour market and expanding their access to opportunities has a stimulating effect on the economy and contributes to development and shared prosperity.

However, in Latin America, the agenda of economic rights remains one of the areas where progress toward gender equality has lagged the most. Despite efforts and advances achieved across the region, structural barriers continue to limit women’s participation in economic life, particularly regarding the social organization of care work, access to and control over financial resources, and inclusion in the labour market.

Recognizing the essential role that parliaments play in transforming this reality, ParlAmericas and the Inter-American Commission of Women of the Organization of American States (CIM/OAS) invited legislators from across Latin America to participate in the meeting “Advancing Women’s Economic Rights in Latin America.” The objective was to advance a parliamentary agenda aimed at guaranteeing these rights, expanding opportunities, and sharing legislative tools such as Inter-American model laws, as well as experiences and strategies for action at the national level.

During the meeting, Member of the Chamber of Deputies Antares Vázquez Alatorre of Mexico, President of the ParlAmericas Parliamentary Network for Gender Equality, and Mónica Xavier, Director of Uruguay’s National Institute for Women and President of CIM/OAS, highlighted the role of parliaments in translating internationally agreed commitments on gender equality into concrete actions at the national level.

In an interview moderated by Senator Jennifer Pedraza of Colombia, Alejandra Mora Mora, Executive Secretary of CIM/OAS, shared recommendations for providing technical support to efforts aimed at guaranteeing women’s economic rights. These included key elements of the Inter-American model laws on labour inclusion and the promotion of entrepreneurship and business development, financial inclusion and care.

During the parliamentary dialogue, women legislators from Colombia, El Salvador, Ecuador, Honduras, Peru, Panama, and the Dominican Republic shared specific initiatives currently advancing at the national level. These included legal frameworks to create national care systems based on shared responsibility; financial and labour inclusion initiatives; subsidies; access to credit; targeted incentives for economic activities led by rural women; digital literacy programs; and efforts to encourage girls and young women to pursue careers related to STEM fields, among other areas of work.

Participants also reflected on the diverse realities faced by women across the region, incorporating an intersectional perspective and drawing on both quantitative and qualitative data to address the need for concrete measures that guarantee women’s economic rights. In this context, legislators shared experiences and strategies for building consensus to advance women’s economic autonomy, including collaboration with male parliamentary colleagues, the creation and strengthening of public-private partnerships, and negotiations with labour unions, among other stakeholders.

The exchange of national experiences, together with the tools developed within the Inter-American system and presented during the session, helped strengthen capacities for continuing to build legislative responses on women’s economic rights from a comprehensive perspective. These responses are informed by strategies and approaches tailored to the realities of different countries and accompanied by the resources and oversight needed for effective implementation.

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  • Close-up of a woman with short hair and dark glasses speaking during a video call, wearing a bright pink embroidered top and dangly earrings, against a light wall.
  • Older woman with white hair and glasses speaks during a video call in a bright office, sitting at a table with papers in front of her.
  • Two women speak in a split-screen video call; top person in a red blazer, bottom person with a yellow scarf, against a blue OEA backdrop.
  • Woman with shoulder-length dark hair wearing large round glasses and earrings, smiling on a video call. (informational)
This activity was made possible with the support of the Government of Canada through Global Affairs Canada.