Spotlight: LatAm's women leaders spur gender equality

Much has been made over the years about the Latin American paradox of women ascending to a nation's highest office in a region famous for its machismo.

Despite entrenched macho attitudes traditionally associated with Latino culture, the region can boast a respectable number of past and present female heads of state.

Today women lead in four Latin American countries, Brazil, Argentina, Chile and Jamaica. In another three nations, Panama, Guatemala and Peru, they hold the second-highest rank, serving as vice presidents.

Do countries need women at the top to push for women's rights? Perhaps not, but it does seem to help.

In the lead up to International Women's Day this March 8, it is worth asking whether having women in leadership posts helps to further gender equality across societies. A look mainly at three of the region's countries, Brazil, Chile and Mexico, seems to indicate that it does.

Under Brazil's President Dilma Rousseff, an outspoken champion of human rights and gender equality, the nation's congress has adopted key laws to protect women's rights.

Most recently, Brazil's Chamber of Deputies (lower house of parliament) on Tuesday approved a bill to discourage violence against women by reclassifying the targeted killing of a woman based on her gender as femicide or aggravated homicide.

Similarly, the punishment for the crime was also increased to between 12 and 30 years in prison. According to the law, the severity of the punishment increases in consideration of the vulnerability of the victim. For example, the jail term applied is longer if the victim was pregnant or had recently given birth, was underage or elderly, or had a disability.

Rousseff's government also earmarked funds to build an innovative network of full-service shelters throughout Brazil for battered women. The idea, she said, was for the shelters to provide legal aid, psychological support, job placement and other assistance, so victims did not have to go from one government agency to another seeking help.

Latin America is one of the world's most violent regions for women: the world's top three countries with the highest femicide rates are in Central America and the Caribbean, according to the Swiss-based Small Arms Survey, while five South American countries make it into the top 25.

In Chile, President Michelle Bachelet's most visible contribution to gender equality is her cabinet, where nine out of 23 ministers, or some 40 percent, are women.

The women in Bachelet's cabinet do not hold just the customary positions reserved for women, such as Minister of Women's Affairs, but head the Mining, Labor, Health, Housing and Sports ministries, among others.

In addition to making it a point of having a more or less equal number of men and women in her cabinet, Bachelet has promoted laws to protect women's rights, including ensuring working mothers have the right to feed their infants, and incorporating the principle of equal pay into the labor code.

Why does gender equality matter?

As United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon Friday told a high-level UN assembly, which was gathered to celebrate International Women's Day: "This is the first generation that can eradicate poverty -- and we are the last generation that can avert the worst consequences of climate change.

"But we cannot successfully address these and other sustainable development challenges if we constrain the potential of half of the world's population. They are women." Endi