The gender focus has been used to look at how social relations and role models for men and women have had unequal value and an ensuing hierarchy that has gradually made women's subordination a matter of fact.

However, in the past few years the social division of labor has undergone important changes. If on the one hand it is now possible to observe that the women's situation has improved as a result of increased levels of education and of their growing access to job markets, on the other there are lingering inequalities in work conditions and in remuneration for both sexes.

The persistence of these inequalities generates a situation of vulnerability for the women, preventing the advance of democracy and the experience of citizenship for all.

At the same time, gender relations in society come together with unequal social relations of class, race and ethnics, which are determining factors that make for a number of discriminations and injustices.

This is why the EQÜIT Institute is committed to contributing for the empowerment of women as subjects of rights and for equity between women and men as a matter of human rights and conditions for social justice.