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Alternative Report to the Government of Nicaragua's 4th and 5th Reports to the Cedaw

CLADEM Nicarágua &
National Feminist Committee

Managua, July 2001

PRESENTATION 

Between 1981, when the Convention to End All Forms of Discrimination against Women was ratified, and 1998, the Government of Nicaragua has presented five of the six reports scheduled for that lapse, and always with delays. The instruments for accepting the amendment to paragraph 1 of article 20 and the Facultative Protocol are also still pending. 

The initial report, to have been presented in 1982, was not submitted until 1987; the second one, planned for 1996, was submitted in 1989; the third one for 1990 was delivered in 1992, during the government of President Violeta Barrios de Chamorro; the fourth one for 1994, which covered part of the previous administration, was submitted in 1998 and the fifth one, for 1998, was turned in the following year. The last two submissions by the current government, headed by President Arnoldo Alemán, are the ones to be reviewed in the 25th Session of the CEDAW and the ones to which this alternative Report refers. 

The period between 1990 and 1994 acquired special significance for Nicaraguan society, since the stage initiated in 1979 with the triumph of the Popular Sandinista Revolution came to a close in 1990 as the result of the most overseen elections in the country’s history. 

This fact is doubly significant in that Mrs. Violeta Barrios was elected. In addition to being the first woman President in the history of Nicaragua and Central America’s republican life, she assumed responsibility for leading the country "in the midst of an economy in ruins, acute periods of conflict over the exercise of power, economic policy and the ideological changes. It also initiated the period referred to as the "transition to democracy." 

In 1996, Mr. Arnoldo Alemán Lacayo was voted into office in elections marked by increasing instability and institutional vacuums resulting from factors linked to the political and socioeconomic problems growing out of the previous periods. 

During the Alemán administration, especially starting in 1998, the country’s situation became even more dire due to the effects of Hurricane Mitch’s passage through Central America, the structural adjustment measures and the increasingly arbitrary and discretionary presidential actions. The latter included the President’s interference in the actions of officials linked to his party who hold high positions in the different state branches. 

The above has increasingly weakened the incipient democratic institutionality, to which the main opposition party has also contributed by taking advantage of the situation to strengthen its group interests by negotiating greater quotas of power in the existing government rather than exercising its role as responsible opposition. 

Both groups have firmed up a political pact that paved the way for the institutionalization of a two-party system, eliminating numerous political expressions from the electoral exercise, increased the levels of corruption and distributed the top posts in the branches of state between them. This last measure has generated constant internal crises over decision-making. 

The Government reports subject to review must be analyzed in the framework of the above context. The Nicaraguan Institute on Women (INIM) prepared both reports, but from two perspectives. The first covered activities implemented during the Chamorro administration, when the institution enjoyed political, organizational and functional autonomy as the guiding entity for policies and plans to benefit women. The second covered those implemented during the Alemán administration, when INIM became subordinated to the Ministry of the Family in accord with the Law of Executive Branch Organization promulgated in 1997. 

Despite some progress in legislation and the policy formulation, both have been mere demagogic exercises to hide the government’s discriminatory attitudes and lack of objectivity given the lack of both resources and political will on the part of the state institutions responsible for implementing them. 

This discrimination and lack of political will by the state institutions in general and the government in particular are reflected in the latest reports presented by the Government to CEDAW. With some exceptions, they are fundamentally descriptive, pulling together general information about situations and activities carried out over diverse periods. This makes it difficult to identify advances corresponding to the reported periods, and ignores the important role performed by groups or organizations of the Women’s Movement, as well as of other actors of civil society and international cooperation in promoting the most relevant actions implemented to date. 

Their lack of objectivity is also expressed in the confusion of sporadic actions with public policies, noting non-existent progress in appropriating the principle of equality and social benefits for women. The effects of Hurricane Mitch’s passage on the population are ignored in the latest report, as is the request to strip a former President of the Republic, who is the secretary general of one of the main political parties and now a National Assembly representative, of his parliamentary immunity related to a charge of incestuous abuse. 

An effort is made to present the country’s economic situation as a limitation on the fostering and implementation of policies in line with the commitments assumed under the Convention. This is unacceptable since the Nicaraguan people know the current government’s levels of pilferage, corruption and improper appropriation of public resources. The government’s promotion of values that reinforce negative roles and stereotypes for women is similarly known. To return society and women in particular to the medieval period, it has established an alliance with the most conservative sectors of the Catholic Church, which does not respect the Nicaraguan state’s lay nature or its international commitments.

The objective of this alternative Report is to denounce the government intentions, detailed in deeds, to CEDAW and to report on the will of Nicaraguan women to resist. This report has been prepared by the National Feminist Committee, based on information coming mainly from the evaluation by the Women’s Movement of the Beijing commitments and Reports of the Nicaraguan Human Rights Center (CENIDH). We are confident that it will be useful to the honorable members of CEDAW in providing better follow-up to the reality of Nicaraguan women.

GENERAL CONTEXT

A. Population and demography

Nicaragua is the largest country in Central America, with a territorial expanse of 139,000 square kilometers, in which a population of mestizo and indigenous races with different languages and customs coexist. Spanish is the official language, although the languages of the indigenous communities that inhabit the Autonomous Atlantic Regions (Miskitu, Mayagna, Rama and Creole English) are recognized as official in cases specified by law. 

According to the last population census (1995), the total recorded population was 4.14 million inhabitants, 73% of whom declared themselves Catholic compared to 96% in the 1963 census, 15.1% Evangelical, 1.5% Moravian, 0.1% Episcopalian, 1.9% other creeds and 8.4% who reported no creed. 

In 1999, the country’s population density was 39.9 inhabitants per square kilometer. Over recent years, there has been a strong trend toward a greater population concentration in the urban areas and a shrinking population in rural areas. Thus 57% of the population is urban and 42.9% is located in rural zones; of the latter, 53% are children and adolescents under 18 years of age. 

The composition of the population by sex is 49.2% men and 50.8% women, with a masculinity relationship of 97.2 men for every 100 women, which has remained very stable over the past two censuses. 

The greatest population density is found in the Pacific zone in the western part of the country, which represents 56.6% of the total population and is the most urbanized region with 70% of the urban population. It is also where the greatest part of the road, industrial and service infrastructure is concentrated. The central and northern regions contain 31.1% of the country’s total population, with a prevalence of rural populations and only 34.7% situated in urban areas. The Atlantic region contains 12.3% of the total with only 31.7% situated in urban areas. 

The Pacific has 15% of the country’s total surface, with a population density of 145.1 inhabitants per square kilometer. The central and northern regions occupy 28.4% of the total surface, and have a density of 43.7 inhabitants per square kilometer. The Atlantic region, in turn, has 56.1% of the total surface but a population density of barely 8.7 inhabitants per square kilometer. 

According to National Institute of Statistics and Censuses data, the population has been consistently growing at an average annual rate of 3%, doubling the population in a 24-year period. This constancy in the growth rate is related to a certain balance between a drop in the fecundity rate starting in the seventies and an increase in life expectancy. 

Unlike countries with similar characteristics, Nicaragua’s demographic growth has been influenced by the net migratory flow out of the country, which grew in strength starting in the eighties. In any event, the constancy of the demographic growth rate allows the conclusion that the country’s population is doubling every 22-23 years, such that it is expected to reach 8.9 million inhabitants by around the year 2017. 

Poverty 

Nicaragua is also the poorest country in Latin America, with a per-capita GDP of no more than US$500 annually. Approximately 65% of Nicaraguan households live in poverty and 37% of those live in extreme poverty. Over the past nine years female-headed households have experienced greater impoverishment than households headed by men; that holds even more true in extremely poor households, which is particularly significant in the case of the Atlantic Autonomous Regions. 

Female-headed poor households rose from 48.2% in 1992 to 67.4% in 2000, while male-headed poor households climbed from 41% to 59.4% in the same period. Women head 38.8% of the households in extreme poverty.
 

Mortality

The maternal mortality rate is 133 per 1,000 live births and infant mortality is 45.2 x 1,000 live births, although these figures vary by geographic characteristics, sex, education of the mother and food availability, among other things. Life expectancy at birth is 68 years and the overall fecundity rate is 3.9%, one of the highest in Latin America.

Human development index

According to the United Nations Human Development Report, Nicaragua occupied 85th place in the world on the human development index, and by 1997 had fallen to 127, the lowest in Central America. 

B. CURRENT POLITICAL CONTEXT AND BACKGROUND 

Set up as a republic, the state is based on the division into four branches: Legislative, Executive, Judicial and Electoral. The country is politically and administratively divided into 15 departments plus 2 autonomous regions located on the eastern seaboard. It is, in turn, subdivided into 151 municipalities. 

In 1979, with the overthrow of the Somocista dictatorship, a revolutionary process was initiated aimed at developing an alternative model. It lasted until 1990 when it was defeated in one of the most observed elections in the country’s history. The political system implemented by the revolution was replaced with the traditional system of formal democracy, although it has been called "transition to democracy" due to the socio-political and economic conditions of the country. 

The return to the political model of formal democracy has been accompanied by the re-instituting of the capitalist economic model. Consequently, neoliberalism and the market economy promoted by what are called first world countries have taken up residence in Nicaragua, with equal or worse consequences than those suffered by the other countries on the periphery of the global model. 

In the past 70 years (fewer than the life expectancy of a person in a first world country), Nicaragua has gone through a dictatorship of nearly five decades, a revolution and two changes of government, still without having witnessed any political stabilization or economic development. This situation has been even more aggravated by the devastating passage of Hurricane Mitch in October 1998. 

The destruction caused by military and ideological conflicts since the seventies has not been limited to a negative impact on the country’s productive and infrastructure base. It has also produced deep schisms in Nicaraguan society’s individual and collective identity that are far from healing. To this must be added the major negative effects of the structural adjustment programs—reduction of the state apparatus and of social investment. 

The slashing of public services and rampant increase in unemployment have complicated women’s lives through the deterioration of consumption levels and absence of any responses to their particular needs. This is affecting the whole system of social relations and reducing the opportunities to generate citizenship. 

The initial nature of the revolutionary process and, within it, the organizational development and levels of political consciousness achieved by Nicaraguan society, women included, made it possible to lay the basis for the defense and exercise of Universal Human Rights. These were laid out in the 1987 Constitution, drafted through a widespread participatory process, and many of its main postulates have been maintained despite later reforms.

The Nicaraguan state is constitutionally defined as a lay state, although the current government has deviated that character thanks to concessions granted to the Catholic Church for its interference in public affairs, especially those related to the patriarchal conception of the function of women in the family and in society. This interference has significantly endangered women’s rights in that it promotes gender discrimination, expressed, among other ways, in the following: 

The preeminence that the Government has given to the Catholic Church in determining national health, education and population policies, as well as the placing of its cadres as "value advisers" in the responsible institutions; 

The assumption of Vatican policy as official state policy, manifested in all the international conferences. In those same conferences, the Women’s Movement has maintained a firm position in favor of women’s rights since before 1994; 

The Church’s open position of condemning thousands of women to death, by aiming to eliminate from our positive legislation the right to therapeutic abortion, which has been part of the Nicaraguan judicial system for over a century. This unbending position has delayed approval of the new Penal Code. 

The carrying out of public demonstrations against women’s rights called by the Church, and headed by prominent government officials and top ministers. Through the authority of their posts, these government officials have used the state institutions to manipulate and oblige public school students and state employees to participate in these demonstrations, similarly accompanied by political party representatives. 

The parading of the current President and most prominent officials of his government, other public branches and representatives of political parties before the Cardinal who heads the Catholic Church to request his blessings and approval for all important state decisions and events. 

All of the above has become more acute with the advance of the general election campaign, planned to conclude with elections in November of this year. Garbed in a disguise of legality, it projects results for the reconstruction of a two-party authoritarian and involuted system that will reduce even further the human rights of all Nicaraguans, particularly women. This two-party system is not a natural process but one imposed through a pact between two parties that defend the particular economic interests of eminently patriarchal groups and positions. This statement can be confirmed by the fact that Daniel Ortega, accused of incestuous rape, is a "legitimated" candidate for the presidency of the Republic. 

It is in the interest of the politicians to silence the existing critical voices and fulfill the commitments acquired with the Catholic Church hierarchy in the framework of the denounced Concordat. For this reason the dismantling and beheading of the organized expressions of the Women’s Movement is of urgent importance to them, in that they are independent and autonomous voices of Nicaraguan civil society and militant fighters for human rights. They have already excluded other political actors from the electoral race through reforms to the electoral law, created an apparatus aimed at restraining the media’s freedom of expression, co-opted the public institutions of all branches of state by divvying up their posts between them and turned politicians’ parliamentary immunity into disguises for impunity. 

Alternative nongovernmental centers directed by women, who receive no courses from the state to help them carry out their activities, provide the main basic health care services and treatment of victims of intra-family violence, among others. Nonetheless, these centers have themselves been the object of persecution and threats in the past year.

That persecution has shifted from focusing on individuals to collective persecution right now. It is no accident that Mr. Miguel Obando, the only Catholic Church official in Nicaragua with the rank of Cardinal, made an irresponsible charge referring to an alleged Central American plot to assassinate priests in the wake of a Latin American Forum of Sexual and Reproductive Rights. This charge made to the press has not been formally filed in the competent courts or with the police, despite referring to one of the most serious crimes included in Nicaraguan penal legislation and having been publicly demanded by the Women’s Movement. Nor have the public branches taken it up with the responsibility it should merit, limiting themselves to the National Police’s harassment of the woman who attended the Forum. 

In conclusion, Nicaragua is undergoing a crisis of economic, social, ideological and political dimensions manifested in numerous indicators of poverty, unemployment, deteriorated living conditions, natural resource depredation, marginality and violence, corruption, authoritarianism, and lack of credibility and of representation of the political parties and state institutions. Together with the effects of the structural adjustment programs, the elements of the crisis just listed forecasts that the already critical situation of Nicaraguan women will become even more acute. 

THE SITUATION OF NICARAGUAN WOMEN IN THE FRAMEWORK OF THE CONVENTION

ARTICLES 1 - 3: POLICIES AND LEGAL NORMS FOR ELIMINATING DISCRIMINATION AND ASSURING WOMEN’S FULL DEVELOPMENT AND PROGRESS.

THE LEGALITIES 

Constitutional framework 

In the Convention framework, based on the analysis of what the Nicaraguan Constitution establishes and ignoring the sexist use of the Spanish language, assuming that we women are included in the term "los nicaragüenses," we can affirm that the Nicaraguan state clearly assumes: 

Responsibility against discrimination

The commitment to ensure the total development and progress of women and men of different ages, religions, races and ethnic groups and social conditions. 

Article 4 of the Constitution’s Title I, referring to Fundamental Principles, establishes the commitment by the Nicaraguan state to "... promote the human development of each and every Nicaraguan, protecting them against all forms of exploitation, discrimination and exclusion." 

The constitutional text reinforces nondiscrimination and the principle of equality; protection by the state; the recognition, promotion, protection and full exercise of and respect for the Human Rights consigned in different international instruments. It expressly mentions some, though it does not make specific reference to the International Instruments for the protection of the Rights of Women, which have been signed and ratified by Nicaragua, but it does establish equality of rights in the social, economic, political and culture spheres 

The 1904 Civil Code formally established equality and free contracting between marriage partners, divorce and investigation of patria potestas; it freed women from marital authority and eliminated civil death, among other important aspects. Other special or regulatory codes and laws such as the Labor Code, the law for the voluntary dissolution of matrimony by one partner, the food law and the adoption law have expanded the rights of individuals and the family contained in the Civil Code. 

The Law of Reforms to Title I, Book II of the Penal Code (Law 150) went into effect in 1992, and constituted significant advances with respect to women’s human rights. It eliminated the discriminatory judicial concepts and ideas based on values such as chastity, good reputation, honor and virginity; typified sexual violence against women as crimes against their sexual freedom, dignity and physical and psychological integrity; and expanded the definition of the crime of rape beyond that of carnal access. 

In 1995, in response to a proposal of the Network of Women against Violence, the Penal Code was reformed again through Law 230, "Law to Prevent and Sanction Intra-family Violence." It modified aspects related to individuals and the family in the crimes of inflicting light and serious wounds, exposing people to danger, threats and coercion, damages and misbehavior, and security measures. In addition, the crimes of adultery and cohabitation were repealed, which treated the same conduct in a manner expressly discriminatory to women. 

The concept of family was reformed, expanding recognition of couples based not only on the nuclear family formed by matrimony, but also the extended family, including de facto unions, fathers or mothers with their children and other family members up to the third degree of affinity or blood relation. 

An important step on the normative scale was the March 1998 approval of the Child and Adolescent Code, which went into effect in November of that year. It reformed the universal human rights principle of "equality under the law" and, like the Constitution, uses the nondiscrimination concept contained in different Human Rights instruments, particularly the Convention on the Rights of the Child, establishing prevention and protection measures for minors at risk and in conflict situations under penal law.
 

PUBLIC POLICIES TO PREVENT, SANCTION AND ERADICATE VIOLENCE 

Through the Women’s Network against Violence, the Women’s Movement, together with the Coordinating Body of Children and the legislative, executive and judicial branches, have promoted different actions, first on an individual scale and later through an articulated process, that provide alternatives for preventing and sanctioning violence. The following are products of that determination:

The previously mentioned legal reforms 

The creation in 1993 of the Police Units for Women and Children, which function under inter-institutional coordination between the Nicaraguan Institute on Women, the Women’s Network against Violence and the National Police. 

Ministerial Accord 67/96, which recognizes violence as a public health problem, and its incorporation into the National Health Policy. 

Awareness-building regarding the need for a registry in the health and judicial system. 

Development of research on the incidence and prevalence of gender violence. 

Creation of the National Commission for the Struggle against Violence toward Women, Children and Adolescents, made up of three branches of the state (executive, judicial and legislative), the Women’s Network against Violence, and the NGO Coordinating Body that works with children and adolescents. 

Drafting of the National Plan of Struggle against Violence, presented in March of this year. 

THE REALITIES 

Constitutional Framework 

Since 1985, no constitutional reforms (those effected in 1987, 1988 and the latest in 2000) have had the objective of improving existing dispositions in favor of women. 

The only objective of the latest constitutional reform was to legalize a pact between two male-dominated political forces aimed at rearticulating an authoritarian system through undermining the political rights Nicaraguan men and women have attained in the past 20 years. Therefore, if political discrimination hidden within the myth of formal democracy exists even for the general population, can understand the disinterest in modifying the form and essence of the constitutional content and dispositions relative to women’s political rights, especially those referring to the promotion and guaranteed option for a greater number of women to run for elected office. 

On the other hand, the latent threat against women’s reproductive rights lies in the pretension of the Church that recognition of the existence of a human being from the moment of conception be constitutionally declared. 

It will be impossible to draft a constitutional doctrine based on real equality between men and women as long as the socio-political and judicial system’s institutions reinforce our culture’s religious values and androcentric, machista nature and legislators remain subordinated to the interests of political parties with patriarchal positions and conceptions. Nor can there be substantive changes in stereotypes and values that discriminate against women. Let’s look at some examples: 

Institutional Framework: Law of Executive Branch Organization (1997) 

The changes that occurred in INIM due to the law to reorganize the state, which makes it depend on the Ministry of the Family for policy formulation, are relevant. This ministry and the Ministry of Education are the main bastions of a conservative and retrograde ideology that has been promoting the return of a state and society model similar to that of the past century ever since the current government took office. 

Individuals and Families 

Alimony Law: In March 2000, the honorable legislators presented a bill to reform an Alimony Law in effect in the country since 1992 aimed at reducing the period of the right to an alimony claim from one year to six months. It is known that a good number of Nicaragua’s legislators have been sued by their wives, former wives, partners in a stable de facto union or simply women whose child they fathered for failure to provide the alimony, which makes it easy to understand why they would draft such legislation. 

In the presentation of motives, the legislators visibly manipulated the concepts of equality and non-discrimination by citing one of the "considering" clauses of the previous law out of context. They dexterously argued equality between fathers and mothers, claiming that said obligation "constitutes a credit in favor and to the benefit of the claimant and consequently used for the claimant’s own benefit, without this meaning leaving the rights and interests of those who owe the credit in a critical situation." 

We can further grasp the effect that this reform will have on women without economic resources when we consider that it eliminates the previous administrative faculty of the Ministry of the Family to hear those cases in which the partner obligated to pay alimony does not meet the conditions. Such cases are now sent to the courts. 

Girls and Adolescent Females. Female children and adolescents are victims of a double discrimination due to both sex and age. Despite the fact that the principles of equality and nondiscrimination are established in the Child Code, inequality, "adultist" authoritarian practices and violence persist as part of discrimination and instead of being eliminated, are rising. 

The media constantly report acts of violence against minors, and have recently been publicly denouncing the scandalous increase in child prostitution, but female children are the ones who experience the greatest levels of discrimination and violence. 

It has been impossible to implement the special prevention and protection measures established in the Code for minors at risk or in conflict with the penal law due to lack of economic resources, even though this body of laws specifically obliges the Finance Ministry to ensure resources for this purpose. It is thus violating not only international commitments but express national law.

Despite the reforms to the penal code, contradictory norms, holes and imprecise language remain in it, which we hope will be considered in the drafting of the new code. Nonetheless, we are particularly concerned by the pressure that the Church and fundamentalist officials are applying to abolish the de-penalization of abortion even under conditions of risk to the women. 

The amount of funds used in activities to prevent, sanction and treat victims of violence is not known, although the greatest progress can be recognized in this sphere. Nor is there a separate budget in the state institutions that treat them.

The Police Units for Women and Children Project has no national operational budget, instead depending on financing from cooperation agencies. This limits the development of new local initiatives as well as any guarantee that they will be self-sustaining over time.

In 1999, only 0.003% of the General Budget of the Republic was assigned to the Nicaraguan Institute on Women, which represents only 20% of the total budget required to sustain it. The remainder is financed by international agencies.

Neither the Ministry of Health nor the Judicial Branch, including the Institute of Forensic Medicine, has a budget breakdown of their costs for dealing with violence against women and girls. On the other hand, international agencies finance the specific projects oriented to this.

Labor Laws: Arbitrary firings by the employer once it is realized that the worker is pregnant continue in private businesses, the state or households where women work as domestic employees. No reliable statistics are available, however, due to under-reporting. Many of the fired women do not even file a claim with the Ministry of Labor for various reasons, the majority of which involve social, economic and cultural discrimination.

The above is the result of the lack of a Public Labor Policy that would permit women access to justice through a timely, hard-fought and free labor trial that would guarantee them compensation for their violated right.

The entire population in Nicaragua is aware of the disagreeable, incoherent and discriminatory way that the Ministry of Labor acts despite being the one to which the majority of workers take their grievances because it is free and the amount of the claims is small.

The labor dispositions corresponding to the rural sector are faulty in general and specific norms that consider the particular conditions of rural women are totally absent. For this reason, the already existing discrimination for women in general runs even deeper in the case of peasant women.

BILLS PENDING APPROVAL

Family Code: Approval of a Family Code resulting from a proposal by the Women’s Movement has been pending for almost a decade. It is obvious, however, that it does not enjoy much interest from those who define the parliamentary agendas and priorities, to the point that it has been eliminated from the list of bills awaiting findings by the appropriate committee.

Penal Codes. Among the bills awaiting passage or entry into effect by the National Assembly are the new Penal Code and the Penal Procedure Code. It was approved in general terms, but specific approval has gotten snagged for articles having to do with women’s sexual and reproductive rights, especially regarding therapeutic abortion or abortion for medical reasons.

B. ARTICLE 4. TEMPORARY MEASURES

No temporary measure aimed at surmounting discriminatory patterns and conduct has been identified in the periods covered.

Equal Opportunities Law for Women. The bill promoted by the presidency of the National Assembly’s Commission on Women, Children, Youth and Family since last year, with support from the Inter-American Human Rights Institute, is bolstered and justified by the results of an assessment done for that purpose, a compendium of legislative analysis and a wide-ranging consultation on the draft proposal conducted in one-day workshops in 14 departments of the country and the South Atlantic Autonomous Region in which organizations of the state and civil society, including groups of the broad women’s movement, participated.

For broad sectors of the women’s movement, the demand for an Equal Opportunities Law dates far back, but we believe that more debate would permit broader appropriation, since some sectors fear that the Sandinista Front political party (FSLN) would use it as a propaganda instrument in the upcoming electoral campaign.

C. ARTICLE 5: SEX ROLES AND STEREOTYPES

THE LEGALITIES

Article 24 of the Constitution stipulates that "All individuals have duties to the family, the community, the nation and humanity." Article 27 recognizes the right of women and men to equal protection and lays out the principle of "non-discrimination." Article 73 stipulates that "Family relations are based on respect, solidarity and absolute equality of rights and responsibilities between men and women. Parents must take responsibility for household maintenance and holistic formation of the children though common effort with equal rights and responsibilities."

THE REALITIES

The Nicaraguan state reinforces the vision of discriminatory roles and stereotypes through:

Implementation of a sex education policy based fundamentally on abstinence and the preservation of virginity until marriage

Ignorance and condemnation, together with the Catholic Church, of women’s sexual and reproductive rights

Absence of measures, policies and programs aimed at modifying stereotypes deriving from religious traditions

Absence of measures, policies and programs aimed at modifying the use of women for commercial purposes and promoting a new image of women in the media.

Sublimation, mainly via the family and education ministries, of women’s reproductive role as wife, mother and daughter, fundamentally associated with protection of the family.

Although the curricular transformation promoted for several years includes "Formation for the Family" and "Holistic Gender Approach" as crosscutting focuses, Ms. A Elida Solórzano (1992), the Ministry of Education’s adviser on values during one stage of the Educational Reform and currently holding a post in the Ministry of the Family, rejects the thesis that understands man and woman as having equal roles in society. She defends the concept that we must "educate seeking how to value the work of women in the home."

Mr. Humberto Belli, one of the ministers of education in the past decade, spoke of promoting the "complementarity of the sexes," creating a coincidence between the official approach and that of the Catholic Church ("Familiaris Consortio" Encyclical).

An analysis of a sample of school study plans, programs and textbooks permits the conclusion, in accordance with other studies and experiences (Wasmann, 1994; Castillo, 1997), that the following contents still prevail: focus on "masculine leadership," "institutionalized violence against women" and the "institutional opposition to women’s holistic development." In the view of the Women’s Commission (CGTEN-ANDEN, 1997), "teachers of both sexes are converted into a multiplying factor of the frustration, passivity and lessons for submission of female children and adolescents..."

Despite some changes in the vision of women, the stereotype of a "being for others" remains central in the lives of Nicaraguan women and, in line with the results of research conducted, is expressed through the following statements:

"…restrictions women face due to their family responsibilities," although some advantages that women have over men are recognized: women are "more responsible, harder working, more collaborative, one can count on them more for urgent needs." The results of this same research indicate that, although women recognize and assume their reproductive role as natural, it does not seem to be carried out at the cost of fulfilling their labor responsibilities. What is demonstrated is that the idea that behind every working women is always a male head of family and household provider has in many cases ceased to be an adequate reflection of reality.

It is relevant to note that various investigations reviewed while preparing this report indicate that the primary message given by people asked about such discriminatory ideas was that there are no differences between men and women, or that equal opportunity exists based on individual capacity and existing legislation.

The results of interviews and focal groups conducted in these investigations clearly indicate the existence of negative gender stereotypes for women. Some of the negative aspects noted for women are "women are educated less than men," "men are more decisive and ambitious," " women put a greater priority on family than on work," "women are limited by their family responsibilities," "women miss work more and cannot stay after hours."

The more positive aspects attributed to women include what are at times contradictory elements, such as: "women are more careful, more detail-oriented, their work is of better quality than that of men," "it is easier to count on a woman’s help than on a man’s in the face of a work emergency," "women will stand beside you more...because they bring to the workplace their way of functioning within the family," "women find more solutions to problems of resource scarcity…because they have been trained for this in their family undertakings."

These conceptions and ideas are present among both men and women, but in a more marked way among men. Additionally, men tend to consider the above-mentioned limitations as factors that explain the difference in labor status and work remuneration, while women recognize and accept their dual role, but not that their reproductive role should be performed at the cost of the office work. In the main, women place the identified disadvantages as manifestations of a prejudiced undervaluing of women by men.

It should also be noted that the situations detected through data and surveys occur in mixed workplaces, and this very characteristic of the institutional setting that presumes the existence of many woman and women in managerial posts translates into:

A tendency among the active personnel of the institutions to perceive formal employment, particularly in the office, as "neutral" and non-discriminatory toward women.

Even women find it difficult to perceive the discrimination they are subjected to, especially in governmental institutions that have spheres of action not perceived as particularly masculine, such as the Social Security Institute, the Ministry of the Economy and the Ministry of the Treasury.

Once women succeed in seeing the differences, differences also arise in the way of explaining them. The women who develop in environments that are more masculine tend to explain them through labor discrimination factors, while those in more mixed or feminine environments tend to emphasize social-cultural factors located in the personal sphere. The latter include the family, women’s role in the reproductive sphere and the undervaluing of women by society’s machismo.

Once men see the differences, they also offer different explanations according to the type of institute in which they are found. Those in institutions considered masculine explain the situation in terms of the characteristics or conditions of the work, as well as of the smaller proportion of women prepared in the specific careers of their sphere of action. Those in "softer" institutions, on the other hand, tend toward explanations linked to politics, power, and the attitudes and behavior of men and women.

D. ARTICLE 6: TRAFFICKING IN AND PROSTITUTION OF WOMEN

THE LEGALITIES

Article 25 of the Constitution recognizes that all people have the right to individual liberty and to their security and Article 36 establishes respect for physical, psychic and moral integrity, protection against torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading procedures, punishments and treatment.

Article 71 of the Constitution establishes that "children enjoy special protection and all the rights that their condition requires" to which end the International Convention on the Rights of the Child is in full effect.

Law 150, the Law of Reforms and Additions to Title III of Nicaragua’s Penal Code, dealing with "Crimes against Sexual Freedom," penalizes a series of behaviors that damage the rights of women.

Article 5 of the Child and Adolescent Code establishes that: "No girl or female adolescent shall be the object of any form of discrimination; exploitation; illicit movement within or outside of the country; violence; physical, psychic or sexual abuse; inhuman, terrorizing, humiliating, oppressive or cruel treatment, transgression or neglect of their rights and liberties due to commission or omission."

Article 67 of the same law prohibits publicity agencies from disseminating messages that incite the use of drugs, child pornography, prostitution or alcohol, or that exalt vice or disrespect the dignity of children and adolescents as individuals. Article 69 prohibits proprietors of and workers in bars, casinos, nightclubs and other similar establishments from permitting the entry of children and adolescents.

THE REALITIES

The government’s lack of concern, disinterest and failure to deal with the growing problem of exploitation, trafficking and prostitution of female adults, adolescents and children is reflected in the fact that no statistical registries exist that show the genuine reality and the non-observance of legal norms referring to prevention and sanction of the crimes of sexual exploitation of young and adolescent girls.

According to information provided by the national NGO called TESIS, which works on the issue of sexual exploitation and prostitution, the number of areas for carrying out sexual commerce has increased over the past three years and incorporated a large number of adolescent girls ranging from 13 to 18 years old. A genuinely alarming piece of information is that, 75% of a number ranging between 1,200 and 1,500 cases treated in Managua are women and 45% are within the 13-18 age range.

From a mapping of 40 points in which focal points of prostitution and sexual exploitation are recorded in the city of Managua, the following were identified:

13 of these points are located in markets and garbage dumps, where children under 13 are found being sexually exploited there. Their main clients are garbage collectors, venders, merchants, mechanics, haulers and drivers.

10 of the points are located in sectors frequented by Managua’s middle and upper class, especially recognized nightclubs. In these, one finds the sexual exploitation of adolescents between 14 and 18. The main clients are businessmen, professionals, foreigners and larger merchants, in general adults with a stable economic position.

4 points are located in the main communication arteries to the north, south and east of the capital, where one finds the sexual exploitation of adolescents between 15 and 18.

Other points are located in Managua’s marginal neighborhoods and solitary streets, especially the old center, where rubble from the 1972 earthquake is found and families live in conditions of extreme poverty.

Another alarming piece of information is that in only 7 of the 40 points studied were no adolescents under 18 years old found, which indicates the growing seriousness of the problem. In addition to Managua, some of the departments in which the greatest number of child prostitution cases was reported include León, Chinandega and Granada.

Given that there is no defined strategy for dealing with the problem, a group of NGOs has developed an initiative currently called "Space for reflection and action to prevent child sexual exploitation and trafficking." The object of this initiative is to unify criteria, expedite the most integral analysis of the problem, target the greatest emergencies and, above all, make the phenomenon visible and create a "network" made up of all sectors of society.

ARTICLE 7: PUBLIC AND POLITICAL LIFE

Despite the fact that a gradual process to increase women’s participation in the public sphere has been developed in Nicaragua over the past 25 years, the primary parties seem little affected by this entry.

Nicaraguan women’s right to suffrage to make them equal to men was finally recognized in 1995 with a reform to the 1950 Constitution, but their right to be elected to public posts was kept limited. Not until 1974 was women’s right to vote and be elected recognized.

In 1987, as a product of Nicaraguan women’s belligerence, the equal rights of women relative to men—in other words, their condition as citizens—was recognized in the Constitution. Nonetheless, the political rights recognized in that Constitution lack mechanisms to make them effective under equal conditions with men.

The exercise of women’s rights is marked by an androcentric political culture that halts greater advances and is a cause of discrimination. This culture dominates both the political parties and the government institutions, where women’s presence in posts of responsibility and decision-making has shrunk.

In the public political arena, such discrimination is expressed in the fact that, despite making up over 50% of the country’s population and nearly 45% of the economically active population, women’s participation in government and other state branches is not proportional to their demographic representation and socioeconomic influence levels. Such a situation is verifiable by analyzing women’s participation in the various spheres of public life over the course of the past decade.

In the 1990-96 period, women parliamentarians occupied posts of president, second and third vice president and second secretary of the National Assembly. Similarly, half of the existing commissions (12 in total) were chaired by 6 of the 17 female parliamentarians elected (35%). That influence was projected in the work and the representation of the women parliamentarians in the following commissions: Economic; Education and Culture; on Women, Children and Youth; Population and Development; Anti-Drugs and the Exterior. In that same period a female parliamentarian was vice president of the Latin American Parliament representing Nicaragua.

Women in the State 

In the current legislature, the trend is that the women’s presence in decision-making and representation positions is apparently influenced by gender stereotypes, since women have only chaired the Commission on Women, Children, Youth and the Family. Nor have female parliamentarians occupied posts on the National Assembly’s Directive Board in recent years.

F. ARTICLE 10: EDUCATION

The general illiteracy rate for the population is 24.3%, but reaches almost 30.8% in the rural zones compared to 17.6% in the urban zones. The structure of illiteracy by sex shows that more women (25.4%) are illiterate than men (23.1%).

The general rate of primary school attendance for 2000 was 53%, but the percentage of men with a primary school education is 55%, compared to 51.2% for women. The net rate for secondary education was 22.9%, without a marked difference between men (22.5%) and women (23.3%).

In the sphere of higher education, total enrollment for all the universities in the country in the period between 1990 and 1998 was some 300,000 students, of which 47% were men and 53% women. Male enrollment was lower in the 1985-1990 period, and began to increase in 1991. Women’s enrollment was greater in the 1985-1990 period and began to drop relatively starting in 1991.

National statistical data show a reduction in enrollment for both sexes in the years 1998-2000. It is also verified that, despite the reduction in the percentage of women, there has been a gradual increase in their enrollment in absolute numbers, particularly in day courses and through meetings, with a reduction in the night courses.

The gender segmentation of careers and professions affects the search for employment, since women encounter difficulties linked to their gender condition, particularly if they are young, since the social stereotype defines them as flighty and irresponsible. Added to this are the problems of little occupational preparation, little or no work experience and the restrictions of the economy.

A review of the available data regarding the academic preparation of men and women in the institutions of higher learning in the country identifies a marked trend by women to study technical careers that are shorter than the professional careers. This permits them to enter the labor market more rapidly, although it also means entering with lower remuneration and fewer responsibilities than men.

Of the women with technical preparation, over 95% are found in non-managerial posts, while almost three times more men with the same academic degree participate in managerial posts. In the case of individuals with university professional preparation, at least four men attain a managerial post for every two women who do so. In other academic degrees, the differences in access to managerial posts between men and women are smaller, although they do persist. The higher the post, the greater the educational requirement level for women, in a scheme that creates a disadvantage for women relative to men.

A strong concentration of women in technical and professional careers linked to their reproductive role—health, education, nutrition, administration—Is also evident. For their part, men are concentrated in the different branches of engineering, coinciding with their later placement in occupations traditionally considered masculine, which are better remunerated and provide greater social recognition.

Another important restriction that operates as a disincentive for entering the different technical and professional training schools is the lack of openings. This is given as the reason for being unemployed by 40.8%, according to the results of the survey of women and female adolescents conducted by the Nicaraguan Institute on Women in June 1998. Such results reinforce the mentioned perception that the weight of the restrictions imposed by the labor market due to the gendered segmentation of occupations also restricts access to educational institutions, a condition that the market cannot escape.

G. ARTICLE 11: EMPLOYMENT

A third of the country’s total population is under 10 years old while 14% is in the 10-14 age range; 27.5% is between 15 and 29; and 18% is between 30 and 49, all of which demonstrates that it is a largely young population.

Of the 3.6 million people 10 years old and older, considered the "working-age population," 48.5% is male and 51.5% female. The overall participation rate was 55.7% in the year 2000, when 67.6% of the total Economically Active Population (EAP) was male and 44.8% female. In the case of the rural EAP, however, men’s participation drops to 61.8% compared to 38.2% for women.

The net occupation rate in the same period was 52.0%, in which men’s participation was 63.6% compared to 41.4% for women. This situation varies greatly in the rural zones, where women’s occupation level is barely 37.8% compared to 62.2% for men.

The open unemployment rate for 2000 was 7%; but in its composition by sex, 8% of women are unemployed, while that figure drops to 6% for men. The net underemployment rate during the same period was 43.1%, with women’s participation representing 51.2% relative to 37.2% for men. Nonetheless, women’s participation in urban underemployment outstripped that of men by more than 15 percentage points, while the difference between sexes in the rural area was 10 percentage points.

The general inactivity rate recorded in 2000 was 32.7%, but in its composition by sex, men represented 22.1% of the total and women 42.5%. In the same period, rural women climbed to 70.5% of the inactivity rate.

If this information is complemented by data about labor force distribution by education levels, geographic area and sex, it is observed that 30% of men, both urban and rural, have completed no schooling, compared to 20% of women. Men are mainly concentrated in primary education levels, but above fourth grade, while women are concentrated in primary levels below third grade.

Public employment and the labor market

Although the structural adjustment measures in Nicaragua have involved reducing the governmental apparatus, the state is still e the country’s largest employer. A brief analysis of the statistics on public employment indicates that it is mainly female.

Women make up 61% of the personnel working in public service, but they are also concentrated in service providing posts, especially education and health, which represent 64% of total female employment in the public sector. Their weight in administrative posts is far higher than that of men, who only present a single important area of labor concentration: security and defense.

Furthermore, if these data are related to the type of institution and composition of its personnel by sex, the institutions with large female employment rolls work in spheres that are traditionally considered "feminine" or at least come close to some reigning social stereotypes about feminine skills: public relations, foreign cooperation, tourism and foreign relations, among others. The institutions with a strong relative weight of male employment in the total are identifiable with spheres traditionally considered masculine: sciences, war, military security and sports.

Nonetheless, male participation in managerial posts is greater than female participation in the same type of post. The probability of a man attaining a managerial post is at least three times greater than that of a woman.

Another characteristic of public employment is that it is mainly made up of young people, and as a whole women are even younger than men. Thus, 20% of the working-age people are between the ages of 15 and 24, and of them 11 are women; 13% are between 25 and 34 years old and 7 of them are women; and 9% are between 35 and 44 years old and 5 of them are women.

In both the national arena and on the scale of Managua, the capital, gender biases are found in public employment particularly marked with reference to differentiated access to managerial poss. Men have greater access than women do to directorial posts and the possibility of access becomes more distant for women at the higher level of such positions.

The differentiated participation of women and men in directorial posts does not seem related to their participation in the total employment of the public institutions. Men always tend to have greater participation, independent of whether the total employment of the institution is more female or more male.

Salary gaps between men and women.

By 1996, the average overall male salary was 1.42 times greater than the average female salary. This relationship has varied up to 2.5 times. The relationship in managerial post categories was 1.45 times and has extended up to 3.8 times. This means that the average salary of directorial personnel was almost quadruple the average salary of female managerial personnel by the year 2000; for every 100 córdobas that a female director earns, a male director gets 400 córdobas.

The cases in which salary gaps favor men are notably more numerous than those favoring women. Another evident aspect is that the size of the salary gap is normally much higher in the cases favoring men than in those favoring women.

It is observed that the cases with gaps favoring men appear in mainly male, mixed and even mainly female subcategories in the overall personnel composition. This indicates that the salary gaps favoring men occur in any case, independent of whether the occupational categories are female or male.

In contrast, the cases of salary gaps favoring women are located virtually where all categories are typically female and normally poorly paid, teaching as an example.

Gendered segmentation of occupations.

The analysis of the national labor market shows a differentiated insertion between women and men depending on the economic activities, which presents segregation in this market. In the majority of cases, this segregation is determined by the gender construction that conditions certain activities for men or women, but also reflects the lack of opportunities for women that prevents them from becoming more involved in the productive space or in one with more quality.

While women’s presence is concentrated in low-productive and low-wage economic sectors or "informal" ones such as the commerce and services sector, men participate more in the economy’s primary and secondary sectors.

In the past nine years women’s participation was concentrated even more in the branches of commerce and service, rising from 76% to 85% to the detriment of their participation in the agricultural sector and the secondary sector (mainly small-scale manufacturing and industry). These data reveal the reduction of employment suffered by women in the wake of the economic crisis and structural adjustment programs in the country, in which they have ended up self-employed or underemployed in unpaid family jobs, contributing to family subsistence while their own conditions deteriorate.

Some other forms of discrimination refer to a lack of occupational requisites such as age, minimum experience, education level and inability to acquire the documents requested (police record, birth certificate, letters of recommendation, etc.), which affects 54% of all women.

According to INIM data, a comparison of the degree that occupation is affected by problems related to job scarcity shows that they affect adolescent women between 15 and 17 years old less (27%) than those between 18 and 21 (40.8%). The problems attributable to being young affect adolescents more (64.4%), and constitute the most important cause of their low participation in the labor market, compared to 50% for young women.

Such behavior in the Nicaraguan labor market reveals the fact that an androcentric vision persists regarding female occupations and their later labor insertion into the economic apparatus, which opaques women’s economic contribution in national life. This goes hand in hand with the lack of recognition of women’s contribution, once incorporated in the labor market, to improvement of the household’s economic conditions, avoiding poverty or reducing its level.

It can stated in general that gender-related occupation restrictions are still obstacles to the country’s economic and social development, particularly because women, as guarantors of society’s reproductive aspects, are the ones who ensure the quality of the human resources that will come available in the future. This lack of strategic and long-term vision makes it difficult to incorporate women and men with more experience and skills in the nation’s development plans in equitable conditions.

The lack of equal opportunities and conditions to break the discriminatory schemes also hinders women’s access to skilled or more productive employment. They are reduced to the private sphere and directly or indirectly confined to the reproductive role in service activities or jobs with little skills and low wages, with all the consequences that this implies for women themselves and for society as a whole.

These biases cannot be satisfactorily explained by the factors normally employed to justify a particular labor slot and salary level. Everything indicates that academic level, experience or seniority seem not to work the same for men and women. They do not explain the difference in job location and wage remuneration between men and women given the relative homogeneity found in these aspects. Despite the fact that labor mobility is generally low, the probabilities of obtaining one or more promotions in the institutions are normally greater for a man than for a woman.

There are also gender biases in the differentiation of remuneration for work in the same post within the same institution and in the same territorial location. The salary gaps between men and women in the large majority of cases favor men and are much greater than those favoring women.