When closing diversity gaps, one of the major challenges in Latin America and the Caribbean is the limited amount of data reflecting this topic. The few statistics that are available on vulnerable groups such as indigenous peoples and African descendants, LGBTQ persons, and people with disabilities reflect economic and social gaps in several areas. Policies designed to promote the inclusion of these groups requires identifying them and knowing what socioeconomic gaps they are facing and the causes of these inequalities.

Violence against women is widespread in Latin America and the Caribbean. On average, every day, 10 women are murdered in the region, and of the 25 countries with the highest rates of femicide in the world, 13 are in this region. Violence against women invades womens everyday lives and takes place in both public and private spheres and within all socioeconomic groups.

Current carbon emission trends threaten inevitable and irreversible changes to the environment that could cost the region US$100 billion annually by 2050 and the loss of up to 2.5 million jobs by 2030. Climate change affects us all. However, women, indigenous peoples, African descendants, and persons with disabilities are particularly vulnerable to the environmental, economic, and social disruptions caused by climate change. At the same time, these groups are decisive agents of change for the mitigation of climate change and the transition to a green and sustainable economy.

The labor force participation of women in Latin America and the Caribbean is low, and the regions gender gap is one of the widest in the world. Although important progress has been made over the last 50 years (with womens participation rate going from around 20% in the 1960s to more than 60% toward the beginning of the 2010s), the pace of growth slowed down in the early 2000s. Once they enter the labor market, women tend to be employed in lower-paying and lower-quality jobs compared to men. This is due to occupational and educational segregation.

The indigenous peoples and African descendants in Latin America and the Caribbean are far behind the rest of the population in terms of access to education, health services, and financial services, something that is reflected in poor labor outcomes and high poverty rates. Indigenous peoples and African descendants achieve lower levels of education in their lifetime. In recent decades, the region has narrowed the years-of-education gap between the indigenous peoples and the non-indigenous population, but the differences are still large.

In recent years, significant progress has been made toward implementing policies and programs to support gender equity in Latin America and the Caribbean. However, large disparities continue to exist between men and women in educational and health outcomes. In the region, girls perform better than boys in soft skills and language at an early age and the school attendance gaps favor women at all levels.

In the past few years, the evidence-base regarding the inclusion of people with disabilities has advanced considerably, both in high- and low-to-mid income countries. This policy brief focuses on the lessons learned from rigorous studies in education, social protection and labor markets and identifies the key knowledge gaps relevant for Latin America and the Caribbean.

Unlike in other policy areas, responsibility for gender policy is distributed throughout the entire structure of the State. However, in order to coordinate and make public action on the gender equality agenda more effective, several countries in the region have created ministerial structures to promote and implement cross-cutting gender policies. This document discusses the importance of this institutionalization process, the role of the Ministries of Women and how they can be strengthened to achieve more and better outcomes in the region.

A significant proportion of women in the region are employed as domestic workers, but only a minority of them have access to the social security system. The labor informality observed in this sector is twice the average informality rate of the rest of the salaried employees in the region. This note presents data on the situation of domestic workers in Latin America, followed by a discussion on the policies implemented to increase the formalization of labor for domestic workers in the region.

By March 2020, COVID-19 was confirmed present in all Latin American and Caribbean countries. Not only did the pandemic weakened the regions economy, it exacerbated structural inequalities. Women, indigenous peoples, African descendants, persons with disabilities and the LGBTQ community were disproportionately affected by the pandemic, reflecting both the vulnerability of these groups and the fragility of the progress made in recent years toward improving their social welfare.