A Decade after Cairo in Latin America

Abstract

To understand what has happened to women's health in Latin America over a decade or more since the Cairo conference, one has to analyse how Latin America has been affected by ‘globalisation’. Exploitation has been globalised with the transnational circulation of profits, and capital can now grow at the expense of the resources and labour of any country in the world. Areas of social life that had hitherto not been ruled by the logic of profit were now commercialised. In Latin America, unemployment increased, average salaries decreased, and the precariousness of working conditions grew dramatically. Services that had been accessible to most people were privatised, thereby increasing inequality between poorer people and the rest of society; thus, in turn, has increased the pressure on households that are mainly run by women—in Argentina, these form nearly one-third of the households. Using examples from Argentina, this article describes how the economic changes brought about by the processes of globalisation have had an impact on the lives of women in Latin America. These are, in turn, seen in relation to the Cairo commitments. It also traces the reactions of feminist and women's movements to the challenges posed by these changes.