Markelda Montenegro de Herrera (born 1957) is a Panamanian social scientist working on human rights and gender inequality, [1] and has served as Minister for Women. [2]
She was born on 30 January 1957 in San Lorenzo, Chiriquí Province, Panama. She has a degree in law and political science (1987) and a master's degree in education (2013), both from the University of Panama. [3] [4]
Montenegro's research has focused on human rights and gender inequality, including projects such as "Keys to success for quality education, gender inequality in access to elected office" and "Factors involved in femicide in Panama, in indigenous women Ngäbe- Bugle and Afro-descendants ". She has taught at the University of Panama on topics involving law, gender and human rights, and has worked in other areas such as the country's community library program, the promotion of citizen participation, and gender training. She was a member of the commission, which redrafted Panama's criminal code to recognise femicide. [1]
Montenegro was the first director general of the Panamanian Instituto Nacional de la Mujer (National Institute for Women), elected in 2009. [1]
She is the CEO of Centro de Investigaciones Científicas de Ciencias Sociales (CENICS). [1]
She was elected a vice-president of the Inter-American Commission of Women (CIM) for 2013–2015. [5]
In 2014 the Central American Parliament (PARLACEN) declared her to be an "Outstanding Woman" in recognition of her work for the women's rights in the region. [6]
It was estimated that more than 370 women were killed between 1993 and 2005 in Ciudad Juárez, a city in northern Mexico. The murders of women and girls received international attention primarily due to perceived government inaction in preventing the violence and bringing perpetrators to justice. The issue has featured in many dramas, songs, books, and so on.
Femicide or feminicide is a hate crime which is broadly defined as "the intentional killing of women or girls because they are female", with definitions varying based on cultural context. In 1976, the feminist author Diana E. H. Russell first defined the term as "the killing of females by males because they are female." A spouse or partner is responsible in almost 40% of homicides involving a female victim. Additionally, femicide may be underreported. Femicide often includes domestic violence and forced or sex-selective abortions.
As established in the Colombian Constitution of 1991, women in Colombia have the right to bodily integrity and autonomy; to vote ; to hold public office; to work; to fair wages or equal pay; to own property; to receive an education; to serve in the military in certain duties, but are excluded from combat arms units; to enter into legal contracts; and to have marital, parental and religious rights. Women's rights in Colombia have been gradually developing since the early 20th Century.
Feminism in Mexico is the philosophy and activity aimed at creating, defining, and protecting political, economic, cultural, and social equality in women's rights and opportunities for Mexican women. Rooted in liberal thought, the term feminism came into use in late nineteenth-century Mexico and in common parlance among elites in the early twentieth century. The history of feminism in Mexico can be divided chronologically into a number of periods with issues. For the conquest and colonial eras, some figures have been re-evaluated in the modern era and can be considered part of the history of feminism in Mexico. At the time of independence in the early nineteenth century, there were demands that women be defined as citizens. The late nineteenth century saw the explicit development of feminism as an ideology. Liberalism advocated secular education for both girls and boys as part of a modernizing project, and women entered the workforce as teachers. Those women were at the forefront of feminism, forming groups that critiqued existing treatment of women in the realms of legal status, access to education, and economic and political power. More scholarly attention is focused on the Revolutionary period (1915–1925), although women's citizenship and legal equality were not explicitly issues for which the revolution was fought. The Second Wave and the post-1990 period have also received considerable scholarly attention. Feminism has advocated for the equality of men and women, but middle-class women took the lead in the formation of feminist groups, the founding of journals to disseminate feminist thought, and other forms of activism. Working-class women in the modern era could advocate within their unions or political parties. The participants in the Mexico 68 clashes who went on to form that generation's feminist movement were predominantly students and educators. The advisers who established themselves within the unions after the 1985 earthquakes were educated women who understood the legal and political aspects of organized labor. What they realized was that to form a sustained movement and attract working-class women to what was a largely middle-class movement, they needed to utilize workers' expertise and knowledge of their jobs to meld a practical, working system. In the 1990s, women's rights in indigenous communities became an issue, particularly in the Zapatista uprising in Chiapas. Reproductive rights remain an ongoing issue, particularly since 1991, when the Catholic Church in Mexico was no longer constitutionally restricted from being involved in politics.
Isabel de Saint Malo García de Alvarado is a Panamanian politician and diplomat. She formerly was the Vice President of Panama and Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1 July 2014, to 30 June 2019. De Saint Malo ran with elected President Juan Carlos Varela, on the ticket made up of an alliance of the Panameñista Party and the People's Party. She is the first woman in Panama's history elected for this post and the first woman to be appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs in Panama.
Rosa Julieta Montaño Salvatierra is a Bolivian attorney, human rights defender, woman's rights activist, feminist writer and a 2015 winner of the US State Department's International Women of Courage Award.
Violence against women in Mexico includes different forms of gender-based violence. It may consist of emotional, physical, sexual, and/or mental abuse. The United Nations (UN) has rated Mexico as one of the most violent countries for women in the world. According to the National Institute of Statistics and Geography in Mexico (INEGI), 66.1 percent of all women ages 15 and older have experienced some kind of violence in their lives. Forty-nine percent have suffered from emotional violence; 29 percent have suffered from emotional-patrimonial violence or discrimination; 34 percent from physical violence; and 41.3 percent of women have suffered from sexual violence. Of the women who were assaulted in some form from 2015 to 2018, 93.7 percent of them did not seek help or report their attacks to authorities.
María Luisa Gómez de la Torre Páez was an Ecuadorian feminist, educator, and activist. She was a pioneer in the struggle for the rights of the indigenous peoples and peasants in Ecuador. She was the first woman to serve as a teacher for boys in Quito.
Beatriz Argimón Cedeira is a Uruguayan politician and notary of the National Party currently serving as the 18th Vice President of Uruguay since 1 March 2020, being the first woman to be elected in that position.
Marta Maurás Pérez is a Chilean diplomat and sociologist. Since 2014, she has been the representative of Chile to international organizations based in Geneva.
Laura Nuño Gómez is a Spanish political scientist, researcher, and feminist activist. She is director of the Gender Studies Chair of the Institute of Public Law and the Gender Equality Observatory at King Juan Carlos University (URJC), as well as the creator of the first academic degree in Gender Studies in Spain, and of various postgraduate programs in this subject. She is the author of El mito del varón sustentador, as well as about 30 articles and books about her research. Since the enactment of the Law for Effective Equality of Women and Men, she has been one of the three expert members of the State Council for the Participation of Women.
Lina Gálvez Muñoz is a Spanish economic historian and politician, and member of the European Parliament since 2019. She was Minister of Knowledge, Research and University of the Regional Government of Andalusia from 2018 to 2019. She is an expert in feminist economics and member of Economists Without Borders.
Isabel Agatón Santander is a Colombian poet, lawyer, writer and feminist. Promoter of the Rosa Elvira Cely Law which defines femicide as a crime in Colombia, she integrated the editorial commission of Law 1257 of 2008 about violence against women. She was a judge in the Tribunales de Conciencia de Justicia Para las Mujeres in Nicaragua (2015) and El Salvador in which they tried cases of sexual violence and femicide convened by the Red Feminista frente a la Violencia contra las Mujeres (REDFEM) and the Red contra Violencia of the respective countries.
Hilda Victoria Montenegro is an Argentine politician who has been a member of the Buenos Aires City Legislature since 2017 for the Kolina party.
Montserrat Sagot Rodríguez is a Costa Rican sociologist especially known for her work on violence against women and girls. She was a pioneer in research on femicide in Central America. In 2010, she published the first research on femicide in Costa Rica.
The Flora Tristán Peruvian Women's Center is a feminist non-governmental organization established in Lima in 1979 in defense of women's human rights and equality.
Adriana Cintia Cáceres is an Argentine political scientist and politician who served as a National Deputy elected in Buenos Aires Province from 2020 to 2021. She is a member of Republican Proposal (PRO).
Raymunda Torres y Quiroga was an Argentine writer and women's rights activist. She defended access to education and the emancipation of women in Argentina.
An antimonumenta was installed in front of the Palace of Fine Arts, in Mexico City on 8 March 2019, the date commemorating International Women's Day, during the annual march of women protesting against gender violence.
The International Day of Black Latin American and Caribbean Women, shortly known as B.L.A.C Women's Day, also known as the International Afro-Latin American, Afro-Caribbean and Diaspora Women's Day and International Afro-descendant Women's Day, is linked to Afrofeminism movement and the broader recognition of the African diaspora and the rights of people of African descent that observed on 25 July since 1992.