“I know you don’t read the news, but it’s friday, I know this.

So I’m going to educate you today.

‘Cause it’s friday, you ain’t got no (real) job,

and you ain’t got shit to do – till 1am when you head to Pacha Jet!”

Did you enjoy that opening? It was a contribution by over-enthusiastic reader  Mychael H.

Great job Mychael! I’m gonna put it right here on the refrigerator door. And those who didn’t like it, take it up with him.

Now here’s everything you need to know:

Transgender people throughout the country celebrated that once again equality comes first. (Photo/Wikipedia)

• This week Congress seemed to remember that they are supposed to do something and passed two very important laws. First, the “Gender Identity” law, which seeks to provide citizens the power to “freely develop their personalities in accordance with their gender identity,” and the right “to be treated according to their gender identity.” This, of course, includes their DNI, which will have to state their gender of choice.

• The second law passed is the “Dignified Death” law, which grants terminally-ill patients the “right to express their will concerning the refusal of surgical procedures, artificial reanimation or life-support treatment.” This excludes, however, euthanasia and assisted suicide. Pretty fucking good, eh? Pretty fucking good… (except for religious conservatives, who are running in circles as we speak, horrified by society’s continuous moral decay). So while in the Northern Hemisphere half of the United States is kind of entering the 21st century and North Carolina is going back to the Dark Ages, Argentina breezes in to the 23rd century, maybe.

•  And now onto the Brits. They are pissed, you know? And rightfully so, since that Malvinas “Olympics” ad was kind of uncalled for. Sure, it poses a legitimate claim and it helps maintain the Malvinas sovereignty debate alive, but it also brings a political debate into the Olympics ecochamber, which we all know is verboten, even though it has been happening since Nazi Germany, when Jesse Owens (a black guy!) won a gold medal and Adolf Hitler pissed his pants in anger. So the political cognoscenti vowed revenge against the Argentine population and shot back with their ultimate weapon: this.

• Are you kidding me? From all the things you could use to mock Argentina you chose to make fun of… tardiness? I mean, this country is comedy gold and all you could think of was that? OK, at the risk of being deemed a traitor by the Argentine population, let me give you some advice on what you can make fun of next time you want to mock Argentina:

• What Cristina looked like before surgeries.
• Maradona’s 1986 infamous “hand of God” goal.
• The couple who married under the Maradonian church.  And yes, that is an actual wedding. Not a joke.
• Argentina’s Nazi past. Next time you enter the Luna Park stadium to enjoy some random concert, keep in mind that 74 years ago, the place looked like this. And that’s not a joke either.
• Mayor Mauricio Macri‘s cringe-inducing, embarrassing rendition of Queen’s “We Will Rock You”. And yes, that actually happened.
• The fact that these sideburns were president from 1989 to 1999.
• The fact that every 80′s movie in Argentina was a ripoff from a Hollywood blockbuster or a hit American TV series. Here are some excerpts of the local versions of: “Alf“, “ET“, “Ghostbusters” (or “Thriller”, if you will), “Airplane!“,  and Robocop. Also, I may or may not have one or more of those movies on DVD.
• Finally: please don’t send me emails saying “Legitimate claim? Bla bla bla islands are British bla bla bla self-determination.” I already know all that and I still don’t care.

• President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, of course, was offended at the British for being offended. Here’s her speech about it. Just so you know, she doesn’t say anything she hasn’t said a million times before. She rants about how creativity is a lot better than bombing other countries. A false analogy that I personally loved.

• Sure, now that the YPF expropriation bill has been passed no one in the country cares about it anymore. But the European Union has a long memory, and even though this whole thing happened like ten days ago the political confederation refuses to forget, and this week they warned that retaliation is imminent. Whatever it is they do, let’s hope it’s better than that fucking “tardiness” ad.

• Another dead body found in the Bosques de Palermo area. You sure you still wanna go jogging there? Because it’s all starting to sound a little too much like a scene from The Silence of the Lambs.

• Here’s another photo you can add to Vice-President Amado Boudou‘s Infamous Hall of Infamy, back from when he was a DJ for the fashion world. How he ended up in politics, we may never know. The photo joins other unforgettable classics, such as “Tongue Vs. Tongue” and “Drunk in my underwear.” Enjoy!

• “But this has no information value!“, you say? Oh please. As if you really came here every Friday to be informed.

• Are you one of the millions of Movistar users whose life was seriously endangered for several hours when the company’s service went down a couple of months ago and people couldn’t update their Twitter accounts? If you are not, then skip this, this doesn’t concern you. If you are, then congrats! The wait is over and after many days of great injustice and abandonment, you’re being reimbursed $10 (pesos, not dollars) for all the trouble caused. Yay, Capitalism.

• Are you one of the millions of Claro users whose life was seriously endangered for several hours when the company’s service went down on Wednesday and people couldn’t update their Twitter accounts? If you’re not, then skip this, this doesn’t concern you. If you are, then you’re fucked. Yeah, that’s right. Claro outsmarted Movistar this week, and after many users complained about a massive service disruption the company blamed the Macri administration, accusing some City workers of accidentally “severing a fiber optics cable.” Sure, the Government is again considering a fine against the company, but they have warned that this case is “different” because it somehow accused Macri of fucking something up *wink, wink*.

• Are you a Personal user? Then watch out, you’re next.

• Next time you brag about how cool and elegant it is to live in Recoleta, remind me to bring this up so I can call you a destitute and shut you up for good.

• This guy died, and even though you never heard of / cared for him, it was a pretty big deal because he was one of Argentina’s most beloved cartoonist. Honor him by at least clicking on that link. You don’t even have to read the story, just click on it so you can at least pretend you care.

• Fame hath no glory! Last year it was Justin Bieber and the baseless, shameless accusations that he had
  

  This is the (possible) rapist Wachiturro, not to be confused with the other five Wachiturros who look exactly the same. In fact, I'm not even sure this is the one in trouble, but this is the only photo Wikipedia had to offer, so fuck it. (Photo/Wikipedia)

  impregnated one of his fans, which not only is ridiculous because Justin is like, the best guy in like, EVER and he would never do that, but also because he’s still like fifteen years away from producing sperm. So now, of course, it happened to one of the country’s youngest, brightest talents: Wachiturros smokin’ hot member DJ Memo. Mr. Memo was arrested (and later released on bail) in Santiago del Estero last Sunday after allegedly trying to rape a 13-year-old, who happened to be the daughter of a police officer. Lies, all lies! Also, probably true.

• By the way, considering that two months ago another Wachiturro was arrested before boarding a plane in a Chilean airport for cleverly making a joke about having a bomb or something stupid like that, I guess this means the boy band is now down to only four members. Come back in a few months when two of them are killed while trying to rob a bank and the boy band is downgraded to a duet.

• Also, that former playmate that caused a stir after appearing at a Mexican presidential debate last Sunday is, of course, Argentine.

• In the non-important news department (football), the Argentine Football Association (AFA) has announced a series of changes in their tournaments that I really don’t give a flying fuck about. But since you probably do, here’s some (probably inaccurate) info:  Starting in the 2012/2013 season, the new Argentine championship  tournament (thanks, Twitter nitpickers) will be divided in two tournaments, each one of them containing 19 rounds. The Apertura and Clausura tournaments will be re-branded “Inicial” and “Final” tournaments, and their respective winners will clash in a final match that will decide the fate of humanity.

• I don’t mean to brag, but I wrote that whole paragraph by myself, no help! OK, I had help. I pretty much stole the whole thing from here and just translated it. Whatever.

• Now here’s an idea that I’m sure is gonna go far: the AFA, that lugubrious nest full of backstabbing vultures, is “studying” the implementation of a possible new system labeled “AFA Plus” aimed at stopping “the power and influence of the barra bravas (or ‘hooligans’) in the Argentine football.” The idea is to register every single football club member and whoever has a history of violence will not be allowed into the game. The anti-hooligan movement was sparked by Independiente president Javier Cantero who said he was sick and tired of violence and is leading a personal crusade against them. Good luck with that! I mean, have you clicked on that Wikipedia link for barra bravas? Despite their absolutely hilarious names in English (“The heavy of the Port”, “The Drunkard of the Stand“), these guys are blood-thirsty goons that will not hesitate to kill you if you stand in their way. And considering that according to that Wikipedia page there’s like a million of them, stopping them means no more audience. Can you imagine? It would be like a dream come true (for me).

• Oh, shit. Here we go.

With an overwhelming 55 votes in favour, Argentine Senators approved a law last night that allows people to change their registered gender to that which they are, not necessarily the gender they were assigned at birth.

The law – which passed at 9.10pm last night – says everyone has the right to recognition of their gender identity, as each person feels, which may or may not correspond with the sex assigned at birth. As such, any person may request a registry correction regarding gender, and change of first name and image if they do not coincide with their self-perceived gender identity, without any judicial or administrative proceeding.

Moreover, the Argentine newspaper La Nación pointed out today that minors can now change their name with a parent’s permission. If they cannot get a parent’s permission, they can do so through the court system.

La Nación pointed out that more than a thousand supporters waited yesterday in front of Parliament for the passage of the law, which also provides that the hormone treatments and gender reassignment surgery should be covered by health plans without having to wait for a judge’s approval. Minors, too, can be operated on, but only if a judge authorises and someone who wishes it must wait 60 days.

The Parlamentario, an Argentine outlet that focuses on changes in law, reported on the discussion before the law was passed.

Front for Victory Senator Ada Itúrrez, who is also head of the General Law Committee of the Senate, said it was sad the law had not yet been passed.

“It is sad to have in our hands to be able to change these realities and we have not done it,” the senator said. “What are we waiting for? More deaths? More humiliation? More abuse?”

Radical Civic Union Senator Eugenio “Nito” Artaza said that “after this law, many will face the sun,” referring to the party support the project.

The Argentine upper chamber of the parliament is set to debate and turn into laws on two bills to regulate the right of “death with dignity” for terminally ill patients and that of “gender identity“.

The project on “death with dignity” would amend the current law that regulates the Patient Rights in relation to professionals and health institutions.

The bill will normalise “the right to accept or reject certain therapies or medical or biological processes, with or without cause, as well as the subsequent withdrawal of the initial wishes.”

Terminally ill patients will therefore be granted the “right to express their will concerning the refusal of surgical procedures, artificial reanimation or life-support treatment.”

The project also clarifies that “no professional intervener who had acted according to the [new] law “is subject to civil criminal or administrative liability.”

Senators will also debate a bill to give everyone the right to “recognition of their gender identity.”

The initiative seeks to provide citizens the power to “freely develop their personalities in accordance with their gender identity,” and the right “to be treated according to their gender identity.”

National IDs will have to comply with the new guidelines, in order to guarantee the respect for each one’s “name, photo and gender.”

According to the state-owned newswire Télam, the two law proposal should favour the support of both the majority and the opposition blocks in the lower chamber.

The Quilmes TV ad "La igualdad" shows men and women as equals in the end

In a recent Quilmes advertisement by advertisement agency Young & Rubicam, a battle is staged between the sexes, with male and female leaders spurring on their respective flag-bearing, animated ‘tribes’. The woman shouts to her clan “We’ve come a long way…do you want to return to not having the vote?”, while her male counterpart retorts “men have reached the moon and now we can’t even get to 10pm” without having to deal with female issues.

Tired of losing his male ‘authenticity’, he rallies his troops with a vengeance. Sticks are waved, chests are bared, hair braids are shed and tribal marks are daubed on with lipstick, in preparation for battle. But in the ultimate of bathetic moments, the battle dissipates into passionate embraces with the tagline “when machismo and feminism meet (later adjusted to ‘men and women’), equality is born.”

Aside from the tangentiality of Argentina’s iconic brand in the staged reconciliation of these age-old social movements, the advertisement serves to reinscribe essential notions of gender, all too common in the advertising industry in Latin America. Rather than reaching a compromise between alternative agendas, as one would conjecture from the tagline, the implicit conclusion of the advert is that when women are put back in their place – in the sanctioned world of domesticity – society, and by extension, one is lead to assume, consumerism thrives.

An Imported Ideal 

A well-known perfum label ad at a bus stop (Photo: Agus Carini)

In a country which generates myriad cultural myths, and which remains in thrall to European ideals, according to Sharon Haywood, founder of Any-Body Argentina, it comes as no surprise that advertising is thriving in Argentina. With a 20% increase in the last five years alone, Argentina currently holds claim to have the fastest growing advertising industry worldwide, according to statistics from MagnaGlobal.

The Argentine internet is, accordingly, an assault cause of prurient pop-up boxes, which require so much clicking and manoeuvring

that, by the time the viewer reaches any pertinent information, their attention span is already besieged by commercial plugs, multiplying their needs exponentially.

As print editions of newspapers continue to decline, overtaken by the web’s ceaseless wellspring of information, the media has become more dependent than ever on the revenue of an industry whose intrusive techniques and subliminal messages are in direct

contradiction to the seemingly transparent agenda they uphold.

According to Haywood, the predominance of advertising in this country is intimately related to the propensity of Argentines to look to Europe as its cultural mirror.

“We in the west have exported this perfect image of beauty….and Argentina is a prime example of how that image has been imported and manipulated to an extreme.”

Take the recent L’Oreal advertisement which sets up the old-style glamour of Cannes with the tagline “All that, Argentine women have it too.” According to Haywood, this imported ideal serves as an indicator of allegiance to European models and as a determinant of social status.

For the sociologist and historian Dora Barrancos, exporting western images is an integral tool in the mechanics of globalisation, obsessively drawing attention to alternative, stylised worlds.

The white, fair-haired, western figures which confront the passerby from magazine stand and advertising billboard alike, argues Haywood, have few natural counterparts on the capital’s ethnically diverse streets. It is perhaps unsurprising that the world’s first store dedicated to Barbie, frequently held up as the Trojan horse of western influence, was launched in Buenos Aires in 2007. And that plastic surgery, often included in personal health plans, has become a national phenomenon.

Insistently, the message propagated by the press is that “the key to happiness lies in reproducing this aesthetic ideal and in successfully nailing down a man.”

The demand for beauty in Argentina is insatiable (Photo: Agus Carini)

The demand for beauty in Argentina is insatiable. As in Catherine Hakim’s mantra of erotic capital, beauty – in its marketised form – is all too often equated with instant success.

Images of women baring-it-all in suggestive poses are the currency of television, advertising and the printed press. The country has imported the western world’s fixation with Andy Warhol’s ready-made celebrity culture and transformed it into something more unsettling. Television dancing contests are morphed into prurient, titillating strip tease, with a camera that obsessively zooms in on silicone-enhanced assets.

The whole notion of personality, individuality and uniqueness are subsumed within a standardised maxim that the body is an asset to be exploited. Women are, accordingly, expected not only to emulate, but to exhibit a model-like physique, air-brushed to perfection.

Digitally or surgically enhanced, this ideal exists solely as a construct, a profitable commodity exploited by the supremely powerful fashion, beauty and diet industries.

“This is a society that is constantly telling you that you need to fix something physically about yourself,” says Haywood. The hypersexualisation of images of women in the media serves not only to objectify the fairer sex, but to systematically discredit their sexuality.

Media Straitjackets 

In The World Conference of Women in Beijing in 1995, attended by representatives from 189 countries, communication was considered to be a fundamental area in the advancement of gender equality.

The media, it was decided, should “develop, in terms that do not conflict with freedom of expression, professional directives and codes of conduct, and other forms of self-regulation, to promote unstereotypical images of women and increase the participation of women involved in decision making in the media.”

Ethics do not yet appear to have entered the media agenda in Argentina. Whilst European adverts have at least registered the need to address the ethnically and physically diverse characteristics of 99.9% of its consumers, albeit it in often self-congratulatory guises, Argentina still remains culturally enthralled by an exclusive, exclusionary ideal of beauty.

“All countries, and Latin American countries in particular, are profoundly contradictory,” says Barrancos. “Argentina remains backward in its representation of women, whilst in the legislative field, it has become very dynamic.”

39 per cent of the Senate Chamber is female

According to Barrancos, since the restoration of democracy in the 1980s, Argentina has made significant advances in achieving a certain level of parity between the sexes. A number of critical laws have been passed in Congress in recent years, safeguarding and sanctioning female rights. Law 26,485, passed in November 2009, includes several critical  clauses prohibiting the publication and dissemination of images and messages in the media which “naturalise the subordination of women.”

But, Barrancos argues, there has “not been a strong, concerted effort to address the treatment of women in the media” on a social level.

“Second-wave feminism never happened in Argentina because we were too occupied with social revolution… As a result female objectification and the marketisation of the body has not come into focus.”

President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner famously sought to distance herself from the term feminism during her 2007 election campaign, declaring that she was “feminine, not feminist,” with the implicit suggestion that the two attributes were incompatible.

More recently, following a bombardment of media scrutiny, she has at least conceded that women face significant discrimination in the press on a daily basis.

For academic Carolina Escudero, the election of a female president and the significant increase in female deputies (41%) is a significant step in motivating Argentine women with the belief that they too can attain positions of power.

The ‘quota law’, a positive discrimination bill to promote female representation in legislative offices, was passed in 1991, making Argentina the first country to require a minimum number of female candidates in political parties. The law stipulates that for every two male parliamentary candidates, there has to be at least one female, thus affirming women as active agents in public policy.

But, Escudero argues, “there is a tendency to treat women in positions of power as celebrities.” By focusing on their physical attributes, the media systematically demeans and disqualifies these women from occupying the same status accorded to their male counterparts.

Margarita Stolbizer, leader of the GEN party (Photo: Agus Carini)

Haywood concurs. Having been dubbed the “queen of botox” by the opposition, “if anything, [the portrayal of] the president reinforces the standard.”

According to statistics from the World Association for Christian Communication (WACC), a biannual study which analyses gender inequality in mass media, only 24% of news stories feature a woman as the protagonist. And when women do feature in news stories, most frequently they are represented as victims (36%), according to a study conducted by ELA.

“Developed and undeveloped countries are both faced with the same problem” of under- or mis-represented women in the media, says Escudero.

“Women are frequently treated as pure decoration, as accessories to male protagonists. Only very rarely does a woman make a televised appearance in which she is consulted or asked to impart knowledge.”

The media is still a man’s world. “The fact that more women are visible in the workforce,” says Escudero, “does not necessarily correlate to a change in the quality and content of those media. When you do find women in managerial positions, they have often adopted a masculine perspective.”

“We need women who are prepared to bring a gender perspective to bear in terms of image and content, if we are to change that.”

The A la PAR network and the recently closed Artemisa Noticias have been collectively instrumental in providing alternative gender-based forums to the male-dominated mass media.

Over the past seven years, Artemisa has brought a gender perspective to bear on the mass media, drawing attention to the slant of the reportage, language usage and image selection. Besides training and sensitising more than 600 journalists and officials in Latin America, it held the first national conference on media coverage and access to abortion in 2008. A section of Artemisa’s team will continue to work under the newly launched organisation, Communication for Equality.

“It is undeniable that your culture or environment is going to affect your own perceptions,” says Haywood. Like her colleague, the British psychotherapist Susie Orbach, founder of Endangered Species, she argues that the monopoly of visual culture in contemporary society has resulted in a morphed, narrow concept of femininity.

"The roots are feminine" praise the sculpture built by Marie Orensanz (Photo: Agus Carini)

“Society, of all ages, learns more from the media than any other single source of information,” according to an Artemisa study. The paucity of real women, of identifiable role models, inevitably conditions social and behavioural mores.

For Haywood, our current warped model leads to a dysfunctional relationship with the body. Divesting it of its practical and creative function, it is reduced to a fetish, a cultural artefact subject to the whims of the marketplace.

A recent study conducted by the lingerie brand Triumph, revealed that 87% of Argentine women are not happy with their bodies. Far from democratising beauty, the objectification of the female body by the mass media results in a propensity to self-objectify in a radically disempowering process.

In a mediated culture, representation is everything. “There is a still a real backwardness in the press.” says Escudero. “All too often you see images of nude women which have no bearing on the story they accompany.”

“The decree to ban Rubro 59 was a critical step, but much remains to be done,” says Barrancos. “Our problem is cultural, not legislative. But there needs to be strong intervention by the state to raise consciousness and regulate the marketisation of our media.”

The National Feminist Network for Health, Sexual and Reproductive Rights has started an awareness campaign about the violence suffered by women. The organisation maintains that one woman suffers from violence every 15 seconds.

The campaign is called ‘Full Stop to Violence against Women and Children’.

For the executive coordinator of the campaign, Télia Negrão, it’s about “education, which will have long-term results, but there are also indicators to measure the impact of the campaign today.”

The initiative was developed in 2010. In its second phase the network publicised a series of videos designed to change attitudes towards gender violence.

In this phase of the Full Stop to Violence campaign a series was produced for Rio Grande do Sul’s educational television.

Statistics from the Panamerican Health Organisation (OPS) show that one in every three women has suffered gender violence in Latin America.

Whilst 33% of women aged between 16 and 49 have been victims of sexual abuse, 45% have been threatened by their partner.

In 2009 there were more than 2,300 femicides in Mexico and Central America, according to feminist organisations brought together in the Regional Campaign for Access to Female Justice.

According to the American States’ Organisation (OEA) gender violence is on the increase in the region.

A study conducted by the Homosexual Integration and Liberation Movement (MOVILH) showed that violence and discrimination increased last year.
 
The text, which was presented on Wednesday, highlighted that complaints of this type of abuse rose by 11%.

Among the minorities, lesbians suffered the most discrimination, while 10% affected the gay community.

Of the total number of cases that were reported, 4% were classed as abuse towards transexuals. Overall, 75% of the cases were considered harmful for sexual diversity.

The report stresses that institutions that should take care of this sector of the community acted against the advances made to support it.

However, the president of MOVILH, Rolando Jimenez, said that the report did not imply that social discrimination among citizens has increased in general, adding that surveys indicate otherwise.

In contrast to the violence, the document emphasises that some progress was made towards greater gender equality.

The report notes the approval of a city ordinance against discrimination in Puerto Montt, as well as the launch of guidelines for the cohabitation of schools by the Ministry of Education, which broaches the subject of sexual orientation.

Another important fact highlighted in the report was the sanction that the National Television Council (NTVC) applied to a religious program for sending discriminatory messages.

Photo by Kate Stanworth

 

Women own only 1% of the world’s titled land and account for 70% of the world’s poor, according to data garnered from the United Nations Development Program.

In a recent report prepared for the UN’s High Comissioner on Human Rights, Dr Fareda Banda, professor of law at London’s School of Oriental and African Studies, concluded that in spite of the progress made in recent years, women still face discrimination worldwide. This is despite the fact that 185 UN-member states vowed to forbid laws that favoured men by 2005.

A 2003 report by the World Bank focused on the issue within the Latin American context. Maria Valéria Pena, leader of the World Bank’s gender unit for Latin America and the Caribbean, noted that: “In spite of the significant progress over the past 20 years, gender inequalities remain an obstacle to the full development of the countries in the region.”

Land and liberty

The subject of gender disparities is felt more by rural women, since they must deal with high fertility rates, a high number of dependents and a lack of access to land. According to the World Bank, the gender gap with regard to land distribution has been shrinking in Latin America as a whole.

Mexico remains the most extreme example of inequality, with women holding only 21% of all land titles.

According to statistics gathered by the Latin American and Caribbean Committee for the Defence of Women’s Rights, the Argentine government calculated the nation’s population to be 36m people in 2001, with 13.6m inhabitants declaring that they had difficulty accessing housing, usually because of land ownership disputes.

According to the subsecretariat in charge of land for social housing, in total there are 15m hectares of land up for dispute, or 5.3% of the total national territory. This affects 6m people, who have no security or propriety over the areas they inhabit.

Contrast this with the massive amount of lands owned by foreign nationals such as Douglas Tompkins (US), Luciano Benetton (Italy) and Ted Turner (US) who own 400,000, 1.8m and 50,000 hectares respectively.

Photo by Kate Stanworth

 

A living wage

Alongside housing security, job security and wages are another key aspect of analysing the effects of poverty. According to calculations released by the government in December 2006, a typical family of two parents and two children living on less than $899.04 a month are considered as below the poverty line, and those on less than $414.33 would be considered destitute, without even a satisfactory amount of food.

According to data put together by CLADEM, 26.9% of the nation’s population would find themselves below the poverty line according to these limits and another 8.7% as destitute. Those polled only covered 60% of the country, but if these statistics were projected on the country as a whole, there would be an estimated 10.5m people classed as poor, of which 3.4m would reside in extreme destitution.

Of these figures, 52% of those classed as poor are women, meaning 1.7m Argentine women and girls find themselves in extreme poverty, lacking even sufficient food, whilst another 3.6m live below the poverty line.

It is worth noting that such figures are not universal across Argentina as a whole. Whilst the national average of people without adequate access to housing is 12.5%, the regions in the north-west and north-east of the country experience levels that reach up to 20%, according to the national statistics monitor, INDEC.

Similarly, the numbers of people deemed as living in poverty or destitution are higher in these regions, reaching 45% and 15% respectively. Conversely, provinces such as Buenos Aires, Córdoba and Santa Fe keep statistics that are below the national average.

Employment

In Argentina, according to the World Bank, the principle problem facing women is access to the job market. Though their average pay is almost at parity with what men earn (98% compared with 64% in Nicaragua and 74% in Chile) their status in the job market remains a concern.

In its follow-up to Argentina’s 2004 report to the organisation, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) stated: “The committee is concerned at the precarious nature of women’s employment, in particular the situation of unemployed women in the informal sector (e.g. those working part time).”

According to CEDAW statistics, women are much less likely to be employers and self-employed, and much more likely to be found doing unpaid work. In terms of quality of employment, the urban sector as a whole encounters considerable vulnerability. As stated by CEDAW: “More than 30% of salaried workers do not receive retirement benefits (black-market work); hourly underemployment affects a quarter of those in work; almost 20% are unskilled and work for their own account; 20% perform work that is temporary, unstable, or of unknown duration, and 7% are in employment training. In general, these levels are higher for women.”

Hope for the future

Photo by Kate Stanworth

 

To redress the balance between the genders in Latin America, the World Bank recommended in its 2003 report that states enact labour policies that reduce the barriers that women, particularly poor women, face when entering the job market. Such policies would increase the number of day-care centres (as women are still expected to raise the children, whether they enter work or not), family planning services and a more even-handed distribution of the workload at home.

At the Argentine level, attempts have been made via the National Women’s Council (CNM) launching the ‘National Women, Equity and Work Programme’. In the words of the CNM, the programme’s overall objective is “to promote, from the perspective of gender equity and equal opportunities, the development of women’s capacities and self-esteem, with a view to improving their position in the workplace”.

Essentially the training gives women both the chance to search for real job opportunities and earn a real income. Training has been provided to an estimated 435 instructors, who will then pass on their teaching to at least a further 2,250. It is estimated that more than 45,500 women in various provinces will benefit directly.

It is these positive signs of government intervention that give hope for the future. Though International Women’s Day was two months ago on 8th March, such issues are universal and merit attention more than one day per year, until complete equity between the sexes is attained.