National Guidelines in Bolivia - Plan for the Promotion of Gender Equality

The Plan considers that the problem of gender inequality is reflected, among other aspects, in the dissimilarity between men and women as regards capabilities, access to opportunities and economic and political participation.

The Plan has proposes the following actions to promote gender equality:

i) Development and implementation of policies and actions offering better opportunities to women:

• policies will be developed to promote qualifications for women to enhance their productive role as well as the promotion of markets for their products. In addition, women's participation in the financial mechanisms for the assignment of resources will be promoted, covering access to revenues and productive resources (including to the ownership of land), to the market in goods, capital and work. In the labour market, women's opportunities will be improved as far as access, remuneration and use of productive resources is concerned;
• the possibility will be examined of eliminating legal and normative barriers that hinder the equal access of women to opportunities and training;
• women's productive role will be improved by supporting the productive competence of micro- and small enterprises; and,
• systems of technological information will be set up, as well as markets and productive chains, in order to facilitate the access to markets of urban and rural women entrepreneurs.

ii) Generation of capacities and the exercise of women's citizenship. The recovery of the women's traditional abilities will be encouraged (crafts, handcrafts, medicinal plants, ecotourism, etc) in the framework of non-agricultural rural productive activities.

• access to education, health, housing and basic services will be promoted, with emphasis on health services;
• the efforts already made to incorporate the focus on gender in primary education will be extended to the rest of the educational system;
• the creation of programmes of access of rural women to education at all levels will be promoted. This will include literacy, basic technical training and support for programs of access and permanence at school;
• in urban areas, programmes for technical and higher education will be promoted, in occupational areas that are non-traditional for women;
• the access of women to health services with quality will be facilitated; and,
• there will be a campaign for obtaining identity cards and birth certificates, emphasizing these actions in the rural area as a basic aspect in the construction of citizenship.

iii) Protection and Promotion of the woman's rights. Campaigns and forums will be promoted for the prevention and eradication of gender violence. Municipal action will be strengthened in the sphere of Defenders of the Child and the Woman.