LIMA – The Inter-American Commission of Women on Tuesday in Lima began its 37th assembly of delegates, a gathering of ministers and delegates from the member states focused on the economic empowerment of women in the region.

The chair of the commission, Costa Rica’s Alejandra Mora, said in her inaugural address that the economy and the empowerment of women are “basic for having physical and sexual autonomy.”

Mora said that the growth of the member states depends on there being “greater insertion of women’s human talent” and added that on many occasions that lack of involvement is because “we are devoted to our domestic duties most of the time.”

Meanwhile, Peru’s minister for Women and Vulnerable Populations, Marcela Huaita, said that women comprise 40 percent of self-employed people but “find themselves obligated to engage in business out of necessity but not by chance.”

Huaita also lamented the lack of equality in political participation in the region because, despite the fact that women make up more than half Latin America’s population, “they only represent 27.5 percent of (legislators), 29.1 percent of the members of high courts and 12.3 percent of local authorities.”

The commission, formed in 1928, was the first intergovernmental entity created to ensure recognition of the rights of women, is comprised of 34 delegates – one from each member state of the Organization of American States – and holds its assemblies every two years to define its agenda.

Meanwhile, a group of more than two-dozen Peruvian activists for reproductive rights held a symbolic protest before the site of the meeting to “welcome the ministers and make visible the terrible situation” of sexual and reproductive rights in Peru and in the region, as attorney Q’antu Madueño told EFE.