Gender Equality
Enjoying the same rights is the best way to promote a life free of inequality, discrimination and violence for children in Latin America and the Caribbean
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Latin America and the Caribbean is the region with the most inequality, discrimination and violence on the planet. The situation affects millions of children.
The identities, experiences, opportunities and discrimination experienced by children are not homogeneous; they change according to the place of residence, social rules and poverty condition.
To this are added factors such as living with some type of disability, belonging to indigenous or Afro-descendant communities, in addition to the specific needs of girls and adolescents due to being women and minors.
Equality of girls and adolescents is everyone's responsibility. Do not look the other way.
Gender equality, for UNICEF, means that women, men, girls and boys must enjoy equal rights, resources, opportunities and protections.
However, the reality continues to show that girls, adolescents and women in their diversity still face greater disadvantages because of their gender. The historical inequalities that women have faced in this regard continue to have intergenerational impacts that reach today’s children.
This prevents progress in the enjoyment of equal conditions and in building new social relationships and healthy and fair environments for children.
Gender equality is central to realizing children’s rights. It is a core part of UNICEF’s mandate and aligns with global human rights treaties—including the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)—ensuring that every child, especially girls, can access equitable opportunities and protections.
UNICEF’s commitment to gender equality is anchored in three global frameworks: the Gender Equality Action Plan (2026–2029), the Gender Policy (2021–2030), and the Strategic Plan (2026–2029). Together, they set ambitious targets to advance girls’ health, education, protection, and leadership, while integrating gender equality across policies, budgets, systems and programmes for sustainable change.
When girls thrive, communities and economies thrive. UNICEF advances gender equality so every girl - from early childhood through adolescence - can learn, be healthy, safe, skilled, and lead.
Why It Matters
Gender inequality is not just a women’s issue - it’s a children’s issue, a community issue, a development issue. Gender inequality permeates all levels: it is present in personal, family and social relationships, but also in institutions and in public policies, and affects not only women and girls, but also men and boys.
Every barrier a girl faces today is a barrier to progress tomorrow. Supporting empowerment is nothing more than strengthening knowledge and skills so that more girls, adolescents and women have freedom, information and support to make decisions about their own lives and act to make them happen.
In order to achieve significant changes in gender equality, it is necessary to increase awareness and promote a change in behavior, as well as to promote public policies that transform power dynamics and unequal gender relations.
Meaningful participation allows children to acquire knowledge and skills, develop skills, innovate and have self-confidence. Additionally, it positions them as agents of change when it comes to advancing towards gender equality, through capacities such as commitment, respect and tolerance.
To make their dreams come true and enjoy integral development, UNICEF promotes gender equality and supports empowerment of girls, adolescents and women. UNICEF is committed to solutions that promote gender equality: breaking harmful norms, redistributing care, and ensuring adolescent-responsive services in health, education, poverty reduction and protection.
Investing in adolescent girls delivers multiple dividends: healthier families, stronger economies, and more resilient communities. The UNICEF Strategic Plan (2026–2029) identifies adolescent girls as a critical accelerator for achieving five global impact results:
- Survival and Development
- Learning and Skills
- Freedom from Poverty
- Protection from Violence
- Resilience to Climate and Environmental Risks
Together, these priorities create a foundation for sustainable change transforming harmful norms, strengthening resilience, and accelerating progress for girls and women globally. By integrating gender equality into policies, budgets, and service systems, and by amplifying girls’ leadership, UNICEF helps create sustainable, transformative change that benefits everyone.
Empowerment of girls is key to breaking the cycle of discrimination and violence.
Supporting empowerment is about strengthening knowledge and skills so that more girls, adolescents and women have freedom, information and support to make decisions about their own lives and act to make them happen.
Gender inequality permeates all levels: it is present in personal, family and social relationships, but also in institutions and in public policies, and affects not only women and girls, but also men and boys.
In order to achieve significant changes in gender inequality, it is necessary to increase awareness and promote a change in behavior, as well as to promote public policies that transform power dynamics and unequal gender relations.
Meaningful participation allows children to acquire knowledge and develop skills, innovate and have self-confidence. Additionally, it positions them as agents of change when it comes to advancing towards gender equality, through capacities such as commitment, respect and tolerance.
To make their dreams come true and enjoy integral development, UNICEF promotes gender equality and supports empowerment of girls, adolescents and women.
How is Gender Equality supporting the region with sustainable changes?
Gender equality is worked on transversally in our programmes
Gender equality is not an isolated goal - it is woven across all UNICEF programmes and is essential to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. While every SDG considers gender equality, UNICEF goes further by embedding it into health, education, protection, social policy, and climate resilience strategies.
Girls and adolescents in Latin America and the Caribbean live in diverse conditions, with different identities, needs, and opportunities. Our response must reflect this diversity through differentiated strategies that empower them to fulfill their life projects. Under the UGEAP 2026–2029, UNICEF works at two interconnected levels:
To accelerate the achievement of gender equality, UNICEF applies six pathways for action underpinning programmatic priorities and scaling ambition through clear priorities:
Towards gender transformative programming: Experiences from Latin America and the Caribbean: This document shows a regional compilation of programmes that successfully challenge harmful gender norms and promote transformative change. It provides practical lessons and evidence on how to design and implement gender-transformative interventions in LAC.
Gender Equality in Latin America and the Caribbean: Breaking Barriers for Every Girl
UNICEF works across Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) to ensure every child and adolescent can thrive - healthy, educated, and free from harm. Yet, gender inequality remains one of the greatest obstacles to achieving this vision. Despite progress, girls and adolescent girls in the region continue to face systemic barriers that limit their rights and opportunities.
Breaking Barriers for Every Girl
Under the Gender Equality Action Plan (2026–2029), UNICEF prioritizes adolescent girls as a key accelerator of progress. The plan focuses on targeted investments for girls and gender integration across all systems and sectors, driving sustainable change at scale.
Further readings:
Why Adolescent Girls? Why Now?
A data-driven snapshot showing why adolescent girls in LAC face heightened risks but also hold enormous potential to drive development. It highlights urgent gaps in health, education, protection, and participation and why investing in this age group yields transformative returns.
Girls' Rights for an Equal Future
An advocacy brief outlining the key rights every girl must enjoy to thrive - from education and bodily autonomy to safety and participation. It calls for accelerated action to remove the barriers that prevent girls from unlocking their full potential.
Raising Our Voices: My Journey to the XVI Regional Conference on Women
This story highlights the participation of an adolescent girl at the XVI RCW in Mexico, 2025, where she shared their perspectives and contributed to shaping gender equality agendas across the region.
25 years of commitments to girls
A reflection on global efforts since the Beijing Platform for Action, assessing progress and persistent inequalities affecting girls in LAC. It highlights achievements, gaps, and the urgent need to renew commitments to girls’ rights.
Guidance for parents and caregivers to support adolescents with empathy, communication, and positive discipline. The resource highlights how strong family relationships are essential for adolescents' well-being, safety, and healthy transitions to adulthood.
Adolescent girls face disproportionate risks related to early pregnancy, mental health, nutrition, and Gender Based Violence (GBV) related harms. In 2020, maternal mortality stood at 87.6 deaths per 100,000 live births in LAC, far above global targets. For adolescent girls aged 15–19 in the region, conditions like hemorrhage and sepsis remain among the top five causes of death. Meanwhile, overweight affects 37% of adolescent girls in LAC, increasing risks of maternal complications and non-communicable diseases.
Under UGEAP 2026–2029, UNICEF strengthens gender-responsive systems to ensure mental health and psychosocial support (MHPSS), maternal health, and GBV risk mitigation are integrated into universal health services.
Further readings:
Strengthening gender equality in the context of COVID-19
An analysis of how the COVID-19 pandemic deepened existing gender inequalities in health, education, protection, and care work across LAC. The brief outlines priority actions to ensure a gender-responsive recovery that protects the rights and well-being of girls, boys, and women.
Gender disparities persist across learning outcomes, participation in Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics (STEAM), and school-to-work transitions. In Latin America and the Caribbean, fewer than 50% of girls reached minimum proficiency in mathematics by lower secondary, and Indigenous girls scored 40–60 points lower than non-Indigenous peers in reading and science. When education ends, opportunities vanish: 1 in 5 girls aged 15–19 was not studying, working, or training in 2023.
Further readings:
Digital and STEM Skills for Girls
This resource highlights strategies to expand girls’ access to digital learning, STEM education, and 21st-century skills. It showcases initiatives that break gender barriers and prepare girls for higher-skilled, future-oriented opportunities.
A practical toolkit that equips adolescents, especially girls, with tools to advocate, organize, and drive social change. It offers creative materials and guidance for youth-led activism on gender equality and human rights.
Adolescent Development and Participation
An overview of UNICEF’s approach to supporting adolescents’ holistic development through health, protection, learning, and civic engagement. It highlights how meaningful participation strengthens adolescents’ agency, resilience, and contributions to their communities.
Adolescent participation and civic engagement
A resource showcasing models that amplify adolescents’ voices in public life and policymaking. It demonstrates how enabling their participation leads to more inclusive, responsive, and sustainable development outcomes.
Adolescent kit for the development of resilience through expression and innovation
A set of creative, psychosocial tools designed to strengthen adolescents’ resilience, emotional well-being, and self-expression. It supports young people in coping with stress, building confidence, and engaging positively with their communities.
Gendered poverty and unequal care responsibilities limit girls’ and women’s opportunities in LAC. In 2023, 28% of women lived in poverty, and 10.7% in extreme poverty. Girls in the region shoulder the weight of unpaid care, spending seven more hours per week than boys, limiting time for education, rest and leisure. This invisible labor locks families into cycles of exclusion.
Further readings:
An analysis of how adolescents - especially girls - spend their time, revealing how unequal unpaid domestic and care work restricts their learning, rest, and opportunities. The report emphasizes the need to recognize and redistribute care to advance gender equality.
Adolescent girls: unpaid domestic and care work in Latin America and the Caribbean
This report examines how disproportionate domestic and care responsibilities limit adolescent girls’ time, opportunities, and well-being across LAC. It calls for policies that recognize, reduce, and redistribute care work to advance gender equality.
Reimagining care: Voices and demands of adolescents and young people in the region
A youth-driven consultation capturing adolescents’ perspectives on care, highlighting their demands for fairness, shared responsibilities, and supportive systems that enable them to thrive. The report underscores the importance of addressing care to promote equality and inclusion.
A call to ensure that caregiving responsibilities do not restrict the rights, aspirations, or life choices of adolescent girls and young people. It amplifies their voices and proposes actions to make care equitable and empowering.
Advancing family care policies for gender equality and child well-being
This report shows how gender-responsive family care policies—such as parental leave, childcare services, and social protection - are essential to children’s development and to reducing gender inequalities in unpaid care. It provides evidence and recommendations to help governments design systems that support both caregivers and children.
Harmful gender norms continue to drive violence, early pregnancy and unions, and limited mobility. Child marriage remains stubbornly high in the region: 21% of women aged 20–24 were married before 18 in 2023. Violence is pervasive: 56.3% of girls aged 10–14 experienced corporal punishment in 2023, and 18% of girls reported sexual violence before age 18. Harmful norms persist: in poor rural households, 1 in 10 girls justified intimate partner violence in 2023.
Further readings:
A regional EU-UN programme that strengthened laws, services, and prevention systems to address violence against women, girls, and children across the Caribbean. Although the programme has concluded, its tools, partnerships, and institutional capacities continue to support long-term protection efforts.
Child marriage and early unions in Latin America and the Caribbean
A regional analysis of the drivers and consequences of child marriage and early unions, showing how these practices limit girls’ rights, education, and autonomy. The resource outlines evidence-based strategies to prevent early unions and support girls’ empowerment.
An overview of how gender shapes children’s and adolescents’ experiences of migration in LAC, highlighting the specific risks faced by girls and the barriers that limit their access to protection, services, and opportunities. The page outlines UNICEF’s approach to ensuring gender-responsive policies and support for migrant and displaced children.
By 2050, climate change could push more than 13 million women into poverty and more than 19.8 million women in Latin America and the Caribbean into food insecurity (CEPAL, 2024). Climate change, environmental hazards, and disasters disproportionately affect girls and women, deepening gender inequalities and reducing access to essential services, decision-making spaces, and life-saving resources. Girls face unique risks during crises: higher rates of child marriage, increased exposure to violence, reduced educational attainment, and heavier domestic responsibilities (UGEAP 2026–2029).
Further readings:
This guide provides practical approaches to integrating gender equality into climate and environmental programming, drawing on experiences from across LAC. It highlights how strengthening girls’ and adolescents’ resilience is essential to effective climate action and sustainable development.
Further resources
Related content area in Gender
- Unicef.org (Global) Gender Equality page
- Gender Equality data overview
- Gender Equality Resources
- Agora Gender Tree of Learning
- Gender Equality and Girls' and Women's Empowerment at UNICEF - Learn the foundations, lead the change
Videos
These resources represent a small collection of some of the materials produced by UNICEF and its partners
The path to girls' empowerment in Latin America and the Caribbean: 5 rights
This report identifies five fundamental rights (adolescent health, ending early marriage, preventing gender-based violence, ensuring equal education, and access to menstrual hygiene) as the essential foundation for empowering girls and adolescents across Latin America and the Caribbean.
Accelerate progress towards reducing adolescent pregnancy in Latin America and the Caribbean
Pregnancy in adolescence has a profound effect on the life trajectory of adolescents. It hinders their psychosocial development, is associated with poor health outcomes for both them and their children, has a negative impact on their educational and work opportunities, and contributes to perpetuating intergenerational cycles of poverty and ill health.
The booklet has been written by UNICEF so that children between 13 and 18 can learn about the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW).
The road to empowerment of girls in Latin America and the Caribbean
In line with the goals of the Sustainable Development Goals and UNICEF Gender Action Plan, this document shows the 5 prioritized rights to illuminate the path towards empowerment of girls and adolescents.
Niñas y adolescentes en América Latina y el Caribe: Deudas de igualdad (only in Spanish)
This study provides an overview of inequalities experienced by girls and adolescents in the region and aims to contribute to the discussion of policies that seek to eliminate all forms of discrimination that affect them.
In Latin America and the Caribbean, girls and adolescents are probably one of the most vulnerable population groups.
The work of national human rights institutions has been fundamental for promotion and defense of these rights in the region and has contributed significantly to the advancement of national standards of protection of people and to the democratization of public institutions and, in General of the States.
