Brazilian kid lights up torch before taking it back to his country, site of the 2002 IDB Annual Meeting. Photo by W. Heinz

Investing to help Latin America’s working women is synonymous with investing in the region’s future, according to panelists at a seminar taking place two days before the formal start of the Bank’s Board of Governors meeting.

The status of working women is crucial due to the pivotal role they play in maintaining households and in raising future generations, according to IDB Executive Vice President K. Burke Dillon in the opening session of the seminar "Women at Work: A Challenge for Development." If the millions of presently disadvantaged women earned more, had greater access to information technology, and received social security benefits, the benefits for them and their children would be enormous, according to Dillon.

"Progress in one area of a woman's life is closely linked with other areas of her life," she said.

Dillon particularly emphasized the serious problems facing women belonging to minority groups. "Indigenous and Afro-Latino women are marginalized even in times of prosperity," she said. "We must find ways to change this," she said. "The challenge is great, but the moment has arrived to address it."

The gap between income earned by men and women is closing, according to research carried out in Brazil, Costa Rica, Uruguay, and Venezuela. But at the same time, recent IDB studies have show that inequality of income among women themselves is on the increase, for example in Chile, said Mayra Buvinic, chief of the Bank’s Social Development Division.

Women with less education showed increased participation in the labor market at the end of the 1990s, according to a study of 18 countries. This change is perhaps the result of need more than seeking opportunities, added Buvinic. While there has been a great expansion of capabilities among women, and also of opportunities for some women, this has not been the case for others, she said.

The seminar, cosponsored by the IDB, the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, and the Governments of Chile and Norway, reviewed the progress achieved in the field of women in the labor market as well as the challenges remaining. It also showcased successful policies and programs to improve working conditions for women.

Challenges for secondary education

In a second seminar, panelists maintained that the biggest problems confronting secondary education in Latin America today are universality, quality, and relevance.

"At the beginning of the 21^st Century, high-quality education for all our youth is a necessary building block, although insufficient, to assure satisfactory opportunities of social integration," according to Chile’s Education Minister Mariana Aylwin in the opening address at the seminar on "Alternatives for Secondary Education."

She urged the adoption of education systems with models and criteria that respond to the interests of youth and create permanent learning opportunities that will allow them to enter a complex labor market that is changing and segmented.

In the next 10 years the demand for secondary education in the region is expected to increase by 40 percent, the equivalent of 10 million youths out of a total student population of around 27 million at the end of the past decade.

To increase the percentage of students receiving secondary education from the present 55 percent to 75 percent, the region must invest more than $5 billion in the construction of schools alone in the next few years.

Latin America would be in a position to make investments of this magnitude if it returns to economic growth rates achieved at the beginning of the decade of the 1990s. Another favorable factor is the region’s unique demographic opportunity. During the next 20 years many countries will experience a deceleration in the growth rate of their school-age population and an increase in the labor force, which will result in greater resources for social investments.

Nevertheless, building schools and filling them with students is meaningless if a better quality of education is not offered that reflects the demands of a world in permanent transformation.

In fact, education is the key to remedy the great challenges to Latin America: poverty and social inequality, low economic competitiveness, and consolidation of democratic systems.

The manager of the IDB’s Sustainable Development Department, Carlos M. Jarque, said that Latin America has gained ground in bettering its secondary education and that several countries in the region are making large investments and studying alternatives to overcome the great challenges.

"We have the historic responsibility to cement the bases that will define, through education, the profile of our region in the 21^st Century," he said. "A constant and vigorous effort will be needed."

Jarque, the former secretary of social development in Mexico, said "the main contribution that we can and should make for development is to give access to excellent secondary education to the future generations in Latin America and the Caribbean."

He defined the following as the principal goals:

• Improve the training of professors with modern programs, organized professional careers and salaries that attract persons highly qualified for teaching.
• Design effective systems of evaluation of teaching performance to measure the results of teaching and the training of professors.
• Increase the amount of time students spend in the classroom. Now the school day for most countries in the region is between three and three and one-half hours. Public schools in industrial countries double the amount of hours, while Latin American students loosed between 10 and 40 days each year because of labor conflicts.
• Promote the informatics culture and reduced the so-called "digital divide" in educational systems. This means designing education programs that prepare youth for a world where there is a premium on working in a team, with creativity, in complex are3as that frequently require technical and linguistic knowledge.

Jarque said the IDB will continue to support efforts of countries in the region to improve their educational systems, especially at the secondary level, where most of the $1 billion in Bank loans for education programs have been directed in the past three years.

Bid to boost Asia-Latin America ties

Also today, the IDB and the Asian Development Bank launched a joint initiative to enhance the economic, cultural, professional, and academic relationship between Latin America and the Caribbean and the Asia-Pacific region.

The initiative was undertaken in conjunction with a seminar organized by the IDB’s Department of Integration and Regional Programs, titled "New Partnerships in the 21^st Century." The event was inaugurated by IDB President Iglesias and Chilean Foreign Minister María Soledad Alvear Valenzuela. Panelists included cabinet ministers and other senior government officials, researchers, academics, and private sector representatives from 15 countries of both Asia and Latin America.

A theme of the presentations was the need to increase trade and cultural ties. In an effort to help strengthen these ties, the IDB, under the auspices of the IDB’s Japan Program, and the ADB launched the joint initiative.

The focus of the cooperation effort will be directed toward issues such as of regional and subregional development, poverty reduction and good governance, decentralization, competitiveness, and trade promotion, as well as other issues decided upon by the two institutions. Joint activities will include cooperation in areas such as exchange of information and experts, transpacific business networking, and joint studies.

The partnership is expected to lead to the creation of the Transpacific Business Network, which will support enhanced information exchange, programs, analytical products and teaming initiatives.

The first phase of the program will focus on increasing cross-regional knowledge through expanded access to trade and private sector information about the two regions.

The second phase will provide incentives for network building concerning regional markets and opportunities, as well as exchange of experiences and best practices among a critical mass of public and private sectors in Latin America and the Caribbean and the Asia-Pacific.

The third phase will concentrate on leveraging networks to establish strategic alliances and partnerships among private sector and other organizations.

The IDB and the ADB will also cooperate in establishing a new professional association, the Latin American and Caribbean and Asia-Pacific Economics and Business Association (LAEBA). Its main objective will be to provide a forum for researchers interested in comparative research and studies of both regions, with the objective of expanding the academic networks and exchanging policy ideas with policymakers and the private sector.

Other events

Also taking place today at the Mapocho Cultural Center was the opening of Cyber Americas exposition, billed as being the most comprehensive Internet and Technology event ever to take place in Latin America. Exhibitors include some of the biggest names in the IT industry. In conjunction with the exposition, a seminar will be held on Monday on communications media and the Internet in Latin America and the Caribbean.

In the afternoon, documents for four loans totaling $129.2 million for operations in Paraguay to support road improvements, rural roads, protect the environment and strengthen the national census. Later this evening another loan will be signed for Uruguay.