web.worldbank.orgmenuPK:34463-pagePK:34370piPK:34424theSitePK:4607,00.html Also available in : Portuguese Spanish   Press Release No: 2003/242/LAC Contacts: Alejandra Viveros (202) 473-4306 Aviveros@worldbank.org Lee Morrison  (202)-458-8741 Lmorrison1@worldbank.org

WASHINGTON, March 5, 2003.- Women in the Latin America and the Caribbean have made significant advances with regard to equality but traditional social patterns continue to undermine their participation in the labor market, and hinder the ability of households to escape from poverty, a new study of the World Bank indicates.

According to Challenges and opportunities for gender equality in Latin America and the Caribbean, prepared to commemorate International Women’s Day on March 8, women have made significant improvements in education and access to the labor market. However, the report indicates that there is much to be done with regard to poverty and social exclusion, reproductive health care and protection from domestic violence.

“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,” said Maria Valéria Pena, Leader of the World Bank’s Gender Unit for Latin America and the Caribbean. “Inequality translates into losses resulting from the unrealized potential of women’s full integration in the economy, the social and economic cost of violence against women, and the loss in human capital from maternal mortality and pregnant girls and boys who drop out of school.”

The study, which describes the most important changes in the condition of women in Latin America and the Caribbean over the past two decades and the challenges, both by region and by country, points out that even though the participation of the women in the formal economy has continued to increase, there are still obstacles -especially those in rural areas and affecting indigenous women.

Overall, the participation of women in the labor market continues to be much lower than that of men. In Brazil, 56 percent of women take part in the labor market; in Chile, 44 percent; Colombia 56 percent, Mexico 43 percent and Peru 55 percent, while in all of these countries the participation of men is over 88 percent 

Although the salary divide between genders has narrowed considerably in many countries such as Honduras, Venezuela, Brazil, Colombia, Argentina and Mexico, women earn less than men in all countries of the region with the exception of Costa Rica. In Argentina, women earn 98 percent of what men earn, in Mexico 89 percent, in Colombia 84 percent, in Peru 80 percent, 77 percent in Brazil and Chile, in El Salvador 74 percent, and in Nicaragua 64 percent.

Factors contributing to this phenomenon include the large-scale participation of women in the service sector, which is generally the most poorly paid sector of the economy. What’s more, women are generally the ones who are responsible for caring for their families, often leading to a higher turnover rate in the labor force and a preference for part-time work.

“Even though Latin American women have almost reached the same level of education as men, and in some countries have even surpassed them, they continue to participate less in the labor market and earn less than men”, writes María Elena Ruiz Abril, author of the World Bank report. “This is a fundamental issue that should be addressed by public policies”.

This situation is all the more acute for rural women, since they also deal with high fertility rates, a high number of dependents and lack of access to land. Although access to land has significantly increased in countries such as Colombia, Costa Rica, Honduras, Nicaragua, Chile and El Salvador, Mexico is the country with the region’s biggest gender gap in land ownership, with women only holding 21 percent of all land titles.

The report shows that women, especially older women and heads of household, are more vulnerable to poverty. Accordingly, discrimination concerning access to education and to health care puts indigenous women at a disadvantage at the same time they are fighting against poverty and social exclusion.

“In order to address poverty in Latin American households, we need policies and programs aimed at redressing gender inequalities, since they will benefit not only women, but their families and the Latin American society as a whole,” said Ernesto May, World Bank Director for Poverty Reduction and Economic Management in Latin America and the Caribbean..

To do this, the report recommends labor policies aimed at reducing the barriers that women face, particularly, poor women, when attempting to enter the job market. These policies include increasing the number of daycare centers, providing family planning services, and a more equitable distribution of the workload at home.

With regard to health care, the document points out that even though maternal mortality has decreased in most countries, it continues to be women’s principal healthcare problem, above all in Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, El Salvador and the Dominican Republic. AIDS, in turn, has become one of the most serious problems in the Caribbean, where men and women suffer from a similar level of infection.

In education, the gap between men and women has been closing in all countries in the region, and in some, women have reached a higher level of education than men, such as in Brazil, Costa Rica, Venezuela, Argentina, Jamaica, Nicaragua and Colombia. This is due to the fact that fewer boys enroll in school and leave school more frequently in order to help their families economically. However, during economic crises, it is the daughters that parents are more likely to take out of school.

For its part, the study emphasizes that domestic violence “remains a challenge for countries across the region”, with Haiti being the country with the highest rate of the female population affected (70 percent). According to the document, “the risk of physical abuse for women decreases with household income level and years of completed schooling, and increases with marriage and, disturbingly, with  women’s independent income in certain countries.” 

The document explains that even though there are some gender problems that are shared in most of the countries in the region, such as maternal mortality, these same countries often have their own unique development challenges related to gender.

While access to the labor market is the main problem for Mexico, Chile, Uruguay and Venezuela, in Colombia it is domestic violence, and in Guyana, French Guiana and Surinam, maternal mortality. Argentina has problems related to the job market and teenage pregnancy; in Brazil, the labor market and maternal mortality are the foremost problems; in Central America, Ecuador, Peru and Paraguay, the main problems are maternal mortality and domestic violence; in Bolivia, they are maternal mortality and teenage pregnancy and in the Caribbean, AIDS and domestic violence are the greatest problems.

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To read Challenges and opportunities for gender equality in Latin American and the Caribbean online, please click here: 

For more information about the World Bank’s work in Gender in the Latin America and Caribbean region, please visit: www.worldbank.org/lacgender

www.vheadline.com Posted: Sunday, March 02, 2003 By: The Very Reverend Roger Dawson

Sunday before Lent sermon by The Very Reverend Roger Dawson Dean of St. Mary's Anglican Cathedral, Caracas

Today is the last Sunday before Lent, which means that Wednesday is Ash Wednesday and the first of the forty days of the Lenten season. Lent for many has come to mean a time for the improvement of our figures because the first thing they think of is fasting, or to use the modern word dieting. But Lent does not exist so that we can turn in a trimmer profile on Easter Day, though losing weight may be good for some of us and fasting may be good for all of us.

Some will save on the housekeeping during Lent and put the money aside so that it can be given to those who need it more than we do and that is good also but that is not what Lent is about either. In fact Lent isn't about food at all; it is about preparation.

Another word for preparation that is not very fashionable is discipline. No one much wants discipline in this world of ours, that has got progressively more liberal over the past fifty years, because most people want to believe they rule their own destiny, and so they believe that any control should come from within and not from some source outside and beyond themselves.

The Venezuelan government currently believes that it can solve all its own problems and help from outside is seen as interference. It is no more than most people believe about their own lives. But in truth, no one is suggesting that our personal lives should be disciplined from outside, indeed I would say that the Lenten discipline is all about a self-control that we develop from within ourselves.

I certainly will not give you a set of instructions as to what you must do during this season. All I will say is that if you want to succeed in becoming a good and true Christian you will need to have a discipline about yourself that is better than most people are able to achieve.

Some of us get good and useful help from outside with our discipline by joining self-help groups. There's a lot of sense in that. and nothing at all wrong with it. and other people's experience and objective views can be of great benefit to us. Such outside help is the basis of many organizations like Weight-Watchers and Alcoholics Anonymous.

Bible reading and Bible study is often a lot more profitable in a group setting than it is slogging through the same texts on your own. But if you see discipline and self-denial as the same act you may be on the wrong track from a Christian perspective in this century. Self-denial makes a virtue of giving something up and more often than not, something that was bad for us anyway, so where is the virtue there?

Christianity is about taking on a new way of life. Discipline is the extra thing we require to make us more able. Self-denial is a negative; discipline is a positive. Self-denial is giving something up and discipline is taking something on.

When I was young, I enjoyed athletics and was quite good at it naturally, and so I joined an Athletics Club. There were two coaches there, and one had me stand on the scales and said that for my height I was too heavy to be a sprinter. I should lose three kilos over the next month by eating less. I went out onto the track where the other coach was leading a group in exercises.

I joined them and the coach came up to me and said he had watched me in a race the previous week and he though I showed promise. I told him that it had just been suggested I lose three kilos to improve my performance. He laughed and said he wished it were so simple.

Look around you, he said, do you think that thin people are better athletes? I didn't know. The best athletes, he said are the fit ones, the ones who train and get the right muscles for the job. See that fellow over there, he said, and he pointed to a man who was rippling with muscles all over. He thinks he is Charles Atlas, he said, he has more muscles than you and I put together but his muscles are not in the right place. He may impress the girls but he won't win races.

Don't worry about losing weight, but come and train here regularly twice a week and we will convert any spare fat you have into muscles that you need to run well.

The discipline was in going to train twice a week, and working hard at the training when I got there. I hardly lost any weight because the training added muscle that weighs heavier than fat but I was fitter than before and my running improved.

In our spiritual life we need to make equally positive moves to gain what we might call spiritual muscle to carry out and adequately deal with the tasks that our faith assigns us.

We may need to train twice a week, and take on a Bible class or some other kind of exercise, but don't expect to be fit by doing nothing or just by getting thin.

The word lent is an old Anglo Saxon word that means, to get longer.

It is talking about the length of days in a northern climate and we, as Christians, should also be looking towards extending the light.

Our spiritual life, if carried out correctly, will avail us of more light each day when our training is on schedule. We should have training sessions all through the year, but certainly not less than once a year for the forty days of Lent that ends at Easter with the blaze of light that is the light of the world in the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.

It is not a secret that if we want to succeed in anything at all, we will have to have the discipline of training. If this is seen as giving something up, then it will probably be a misery to us and to everyone else who has to be with us.

For example if you want to be a pianist, you cannot achieve this by knowing the theory of music only, even though this might be a discipline in its own right. There will come a time when you have to sit down and actually play the keys, and do it over and over and over again till your hands and brain knows what to do automatically.

If we want to be Christians, we have to know the theory that we get through bible studies and a knowledge of the faith, and then we have to practice over and over again till it becomes second nature ... our first nature may want to act differently and this is what we have to subdue. Bonhoeffer said that the strict exercise of self-control is an essential part of the Christian life.

Our training regime for being a good Christian may include fasting every now and again, but its purpose has nothing to do with how we look physically but how spiritually healthy we are and to make us fit and able to accomplish the things that God would have us do.

www.dailytimes.com.pk

Speaking at an informal summit of the Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC) at Kuala Lumpur, the Malaysian prime minister, Mahathir Mohamed, said that the summit should consider using an oil embargo “to deter the United States from attacking Iraq”. Further elaborating the theme, he said that an oil embargo by the Islamic oil-producing nations could be resorted to “with regard to both the Palestine and Iraq”. But he was also careful to note that an embargo could prove to be a double-edged weapon, hurting the third world states more than the targeted United States. He clarified that the OIC had agreed “to think about the idea”. In the meanwhile, he recommended that the Islamic world should make common cause with the European states who were opposed to the war on Iraq. Mr Mahathir Mohamed must be thinking of a very sophisticated strategy of oil embargo that would neatly target only the United States and those siding with it and exclude those on the side of the Muslim world and its sympathisers. But even as far as the United States is concerned, it is likely to be affected by the embargo only partially. To be exact, only to the tune of 18 percent as that is the share of the Gulf in the American imports of oil. Today, the South Atlantic region supplies between 45 and 48 percent of oil imported by it. Combined with imports from Canada, the North Sea, South America (Venezuela and Mexico), Western East Africa (Nigeria, Equatorial Guinea, Angola and the Congo) the total non-Gulf oil represents 81 percent of the oil imported by the United States. During the Gulf War (1990-91) 27 percent of American oil had come from the Gulf. That could be one reason why the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) pledged never to use the oil weapon again and has not proposed an oil embargo in response to the continuing Israeli acts of wanton cruelty in Palestine. Only Iran has been calling for one and it even cut its production in April last year for a month to demonstrate its willingness to use the “oil weapon”. But if the OIC states decide to use the weapon now they will have to take a close look at what happened when it was used by them in 1973. Though ostensibly provoked by the Ramadan war, the embargo was not only against America but also against the entire industrially advanced world using cheap OPEC oil to keep their economies going. The price of crude oil climbed immediately from 2.5 dollars per barrel to 10 dollars and then went up to 40 dollars in the spot market. If the purpose at that time was to deprive the United States of oil, the strategy failed because the oil got to it nonetheless through third party importers. It benefited the American and Western manufacturers of high-technology goods and weapons as prices of such items were hitched up. However, Iran was able to afford the new prices of such imported commodities because income from oil rose considerably, and some observers think that Iran in fact was encouraged by some Western advisers to resort to the embargo to acquire enough income to be able to buy American arms. The Arab oil producers also saw their coffers fill up but most of the new “petrodollars” found their way into banks in the West to slake the region’s thirst for weapons and luxuries. As Mr Mahathir Mohamed said, the crunch came on the poor third world countries which could neither afford the 40 dollar per barrel oil nor buy the Western capital goods at the new inflated prices. Pakistan was one of the countries that went belly-up: it had to massively devalue its currency, causing the industrial sector to collapse and borrowers to default on loans. As oil prices went up in 1974, alternative sources to oil became economically viable. The West, armed with nuclear technology, converted to nuclear power and opened up the heretofore uneconomical offshore wells in the North Sea. In 1980, OPEC collapsed under the burden of its own embargo when the prices collapsed below 10 dollars per barrel and there was a glut in the market created by buyers building up huge reserves. What happened to the “petrodollars” is another sad story. Enriched with oil money, Iraq fell upon an Islamic revolutionary Iran and spent billions of dollars borrowed from the similarly enriched Gulf states to prosecute a war that is believed to have cost over 160 billion dollars. Embargo-enriched Iran suffered a fall in oil production that it still has not regained and is today dogged by economic problems incidental to non-oil producing third world states. After the 1991 Gulf war, the oil producers now being asked to go for another embargo were further impoverished and their leader Saudi Arabia was forced to borrow billions of dollars to meet its budget deficits. In 1973, the Islamic states had 70 percent of the world oil market; today they have 40 percent of it, and that 40 percent mostly includes states that don’t support attack on Iraq. An oil embargo will not work but a cutback in oil production will definitely jolt the world market. The crunch will also come on the “potential” oil producers in the Islamic world now struggling to bring themselves on line on the Caspian littoral. Foreign capital and technology will converge again on these Central Asian and Caucasian republics and effectively wean them away from any collective OIC decision to resort to a new oil embargo. Therefore our advice to Mr Mahatir is: Let’s not think of such ideas. *

reuters.com Thu February 27, 2003 03:57 PM ET By Pascal Fletcher

CARACAS, Venezuela, Feb 27 (Reuters) - An opposition strike against President Hugo Chavez has cost Venezuela's oil-reliant economy an estimated $7.6 billion in lost production and fiscal revenues, inflicting severe, long-term damage, the Finance Ministry said.

In a grim report on what it called the strike's "economic sabotage," the ministry said the stoppage that began Dec. 2 and fizzled out early this month had also closed down businesses, caused shortages of goods, hiked prices, reduced salaries and destroyed jobs.

"The damages caused are severe and long-term ... they will permanently affect the whole population," said the report by Finance Minister Tobias Nobrega, which reviewed the 2002 year but included a summary of the effects of the strike.

The report was sent to Reuters in Caracas on Thursday.

The strike, called to try to force left-winger Chavez to resign and hold early elections, sharply cut back oil production and shipments by the world's No. 5 oil exporter, forcing the government to slash spending and introduce foreign exchange and price controls earlier this month.

Nobrega's report estimated total loss of production in the economy caused by the strike at 9.9 trillion bolivars ($6.2 billion using the government's fixed exchange rate of 1,600 bolivars to the U.S. dollar that was introduced Feb. 6).

Of this lost production, 4.3 trillion bolivars ($2.7 billion) corresponded to the oil sector and 5.6 trillion bolivars ($3.5 billion) to the non-oil sector.

In addition, loss of fiscal income for the government as a result of the strike was estimated at 2.2 trillion bolivars ($1.4 billion). Oil exports normally account for around half of total government revenues.

BLEAK RECOVERY PROSPECTS

The effects of the strike are still being felt in the strategic oil sector, where the government has sacked more than 13,000 striking employees of the state oil giant PDVSA. It says it has restored oil output to just over 2 million barrels per day (bpd), about two-thirds of pre-strike levels.

Oil strikers put output at around 1.58 million bpd.

Energy Minister Rafael Ramirez said in Washington on Thursday the government hoped production would be approaching its pre-strike level of 3.1 million bpd by the end of March.

Condemning the strike as an "act of economic irrationality," Nobrega's report said its impact would severely constrain Venezuela's recovery prospects in 2003.

The economy shrank 8.9 percent in 2002, according to the government. Economists and analysts polled by Reuters this month predicted a sharper contraction this year of more than 13 percent. The poll saw inflation rising to 42.8 percent in 2003 from 31.2 percent last year.

Negotiations between Chavez's government and its political opponents have so far failed to produce an agreement on early elections to solve the long-running and often violent feud that has shattered investor confidence in Venezuela.

Tensions have risen again this month after authorities last week arrested one of the alleged strike leaders, business chief Carlos Fernandez. He is under house arrest facing rebellion charges and arrest orders have been issued for other alleged ringleaders of the opposition stoppage.

Bomb blasts badly damaged Spanish and Colombian diplomatic buildings in Caracas early on Tuesday after Chavez accused Spain, Colombia and the United States of meddling in his country's political crisis.

Citing a deterioration in the political climate, investment banks Merril Lynch and Credit Suisse First Boston this week downgraded their recommendations on Venezuelan sovereign bonds.

The Finance Ministry report said Venezuela's foreign debt at the end of 2002 stood at $22.3 billion, a 1.16 percent decrease from the previous year.

www.daily.umn.edu February 27, 2003 EDITORIAL

For the first time in Colombia’s bloody civil war, the country’s largest rebel group, the FARC, has captured U.S. government workers and deemed them “prisoners of war.” In Venezuela, the world’s fifth-largest oil supplier, violent political struggle between President Hugo Chavez and his opponents has caused serious international implications. And in poverty-stricken Bolivia, the government’s austerity plans recommended by the International Monetary Fund were met with deadly protests and unrest that, if continued, could erase the free-market gains made by that country over the last 20 years.

Even as the world’s attention turns to Iraq and the Korean peninsula, these events showcase the need for the United States to engage Latin America and carefully apply a combination of measures to address the unique problems of each of these countries.

Colombia’s situation is particularly grim. In 1997, the United States began supplying Colombia with funds and military assistance for the purpose of squashing drug production and fighting leftist rebels who — while leading an insurgency against the Colombian government for the past 39 years — became intimately involved in the country’s drug trade. Since then, the original purpose of the U.S. mission — known as Plan Colombia — has changed. The first shift occurred after Sept. 11, 2001, when the United States designated Colombia’s two leftist guerrilla groups and right-wing paramilitary army as terrorists. This placed the intractable problems of drugs and Colombia’s civil war within the George W. Bush administration’s “war on terrorism.” The next shift came after FARC rebels kidnapped three federal workers contracted by the Defense Department. Coming off the heels of military buildups in the Persian Gulf and the Philippines, the Bush administration is now planning to send close to 150 troops to Colombia to aid in the rescue of the kidnapped Americans.

In attempting a rescue, the United States must be careful not to go beyond the scope of the legislation permitting U.S. troops in Colombia. Congress voiced this sentiment in 2001 due to concerns the United States might end up in a protracted conflict similar to Vietnam. Therefore, restrictions were put in place on the number of military personnel in Colombia at any given time. In the most recent report delivered by Bush to Congress for the period ending in mid-January, there were 208 military personnel and 279 contract workers in Colombia. The saving grace in all this is a restrictive clause in the legislation allowing the president to “carry out emergency evacuation of U.S. citizens or any search-and-rescue operation for U.S. military personnel or U.S. citizens.”

Meanwhile, in Venezuela bombs recently ripped through the Spanish and Colombian diplomatic missions. The attacks followed a series of often-violent protests in Venezuela, as well as a two-month-long strike that failed to oust Chavez. In Bolivia, President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada’s Cabinet resigned en masse Tuesday after violent protests of economic policies left 29 people dead.

Although the United States used the Monroe Doctrine of 1823 to stake out its claim to the countries of Latin America, it was not until the late 19th century that it had the economic and military might to pursue its interests there wholesale. The United States must not lose sight of South America — its strategic and economic importance, as well as the plight of its people — as it pursues its agenda elsewhere.