No one denies today that the achievements regarding women’s inclusion and representation in the region have been a direct result of women and their activism. Using what the scholar Elizabeth Friedman has called “junctural coalitions,” women have joined across civil society organizations, the public sector, academia, among other sectors, to generate spaces where they have organized themselves beyond their ideological positions, party loyalties, and traditional political channels, with the common goal of improving the situation of women. But does international cooperation play a role? International cooperation support to these “junctural coalitions” frequently ends up serving a catalyzer in the process of achieving the objectives of equality and access to rights for women.
International cooperation strategies in this particular agenda have been permeated by at least two elements: the adoption of a rights-based approach and the incorporation of a gender perspective in interventions and investments. The rights-based approach is a method of designing and implementing projects and policies in alignment with the contents and aspirations enshrined in human rights treaties, in this particular case, linked to women’s rights. In essence, rights-based cooperation understands the full exercise of human rights as the ultimate goal putting people at the center, and ensuring that human rights standards inform the very formulation of the objectives, goals and measurable indicators of its programming. On the other hand, a gender perspective focuses on the differentiated way in which men and women experience reality also highlighting existing inequalities. Although they may sound similar in their objectives and strategies, these approaches are different and complementary. While the rights-based approach represents a broader view that can include the gender approach, a gender perspective goes to the bottom of the inequalities between men and women. In practice, these have guided the work of international cooperation on issues of inclusion and political representation of women in Latin America and the Caribbean.
A comprehensive look at cooperation efforts suggests that there are at least three dimensions of its scope; two that take place openly and publicly, and at least one that may occur behind closed doors. These include: (a) influence through the monitoring of the follow up mechanisms of human rights treaties, (b) investment in technical cooperation through financial support, exchange of expertise, implementation of cooperation projects in the countries, and the promotion of networks and training spaces for women politicians, among other activities, and (c) the use of soft diplomacy to influence decisions that promote the inclusion and representation of women in all dimensions of their citizenship. What are the objectives of these three strategies?
(1) Influence through the monitoring of follow up mechanisms of human rights treaties. Women’s human rights treaties and conventions have become practical tools to counteract the effects of discrimination. Symbolically speaking, they establish broad regional and global consensus on women’s rights and, from a practical point of view, they become obligations for states. These norms act as a kind of “moral pressure” that forces countries to make their best efforts to progressively bring rights closer to women. Two human rights treaties directly aligned with the aspiration of women’s inclusion and representation include the Convention on All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW, adopted in 1979) at the global level, and the Inter-American Convention to Prevent, Punish and Eradicate Violence against Women, known as the Belém do Pará Convention (site of its adoption in 1994) at the inter-American level.
Beyond these commitments, the scope of cooperation on the inclusion and representation of women also encompasses the role played by the committees established by the treaties themselves to monitor the progress (or not) that states make in the implementation of the contents of these instruments. These organizations in the international sphere play a key role in “supervising and pressuring States to comply with their human rights obligations,” also playing a role in the interpretation of international law and serving as a bridge between civil society. and the states. It is important not to be naïve; in other words, the ratification of these human rights treaties does not automatically guarantee women’s rights. However, what cannot be denied is that they play an important role in mobilizing consensus and raising standards for the protection of women’s rights and representation.
(2) Technical, financial, and in-kind cooperation. A central and essential element of international cooperation efforts, whether bilateral in nature or that which comes from multilateral and regional organizations, is technical or financial assistance to achieve gender equality. Countries and international organizations become one more actor, but not an irrelevant one, in the group of those promoting the inclusion and representation of women. In the dimension of inclusion and representation, because it is linked to the perceptions and normalization of women’s full access to their rights and their presence in spaces of power, any investment in activities that seek this goal has important impacts. By the way, for cooperation to have an impact on the reality of women, it must necessarily have a rights-based and gender focus. Considering the specific and additional limitations on access to full inclusion and representation of women with intersectional identities, it must also contain a diversity and inclusion perspective. In the area of women’s empowerment, this alignment is manifested, among others, through actions such as:
- The incorporation of gender analysis and mainstreaming in cooperation activities and the design of deliberate cooperation strategies to achieve gender equality within projects, no matter the thematic area.
- The promotion of women’s training activities and the establishment of networks among them.
- The generation of data disaggregated by gender, including the diversity variable.
- The use and promotion of inclusive language.
In practice, these functions performed by international cooperation are executed through various activities such as training workshops for women, the holding of forums for the exchange of experiences and empowerment of women, the organization of high-level forums to make key issues visible in the agenda of women’s empowerment, human rights and inclusion, the holding of workshops between key actors working on the gender, human rights and inclusion agenda with content oriented to public policies that contribute to the design and implementation of laws, programs, activities, among other activities.
(3) Soft diplomacy. Finally, soft diplomacy refers to the ability to persuade, rather than coerce, to influence the preferences of others through incentives, and is a fundamental function of international cooperation on inclusion and representation of women. As the internationalist Nye indicates, soft power is the ability of one country to affect another or others to obtain certain results through attraction and persuasion rather than coercion or payment, using a combination of resources such as culture, values and policies. This type of diplomacy is not visible and is also built on the influence that civil society organizations and other actors working for the inclusion and representation of women already have. The objective is to seek to raise the costs of the exclusion of women and exclusive practices, but without confronting them. This dimension of the role of international cooperation is assumed as a priority by countries such as Canada, Chile, or Mexico in the Americas that have openly adopted a feminist foreign policy.
In short, it is timely to reevaluate the contributions that international cooperation makes in the countries of the Americas, especially regarding women’s inclusion and representation, and of all human diversity. Equality objectives are indeed achieved among the various actors in the ecosystem, and under the leadership of local actors. However, the multilateral space can support using as a guide the commitments linked to human rights treaties, investing in the implementation of activities and projects, and finally, through soft diplomacy. All of this will allow us to sustain the achievements that have been achieved in this area in Latin America and the Caribbean until now, and to move towards new achievements on women’s inclusion and representation, while at the same time renewing and protecting the multilateral space and its contributions.
Betilde Muñoz-Pogossian is the director of the Department of Social Inclusion at the Organization of American States (OAS). She has conducted over 20 years of political and electoral observation missions on behalf of the OAS, and additionally is cofounder of Red de Politólogas #NoSinMujeres, a project that seeks to map and promote the work of female political scientists in Latin America. This article, and the opinions share throughout, represent her personal views and not those of the OAS.
