Using quality data and information to make public decisions has become a global practice in government policy making. Evidence-based policy making is an approach that proposes building public plans and programmes on the results of research, monitoring and evaluations and in consultation with different actors. This decision-making process contributes to a more systemic understanding of the problems being addressed and can help improve the effectiveness of government action.

Evaluating the impact, processes and design of plans and public programmes is a method of generating evidence about the performance of government initiatives. However, in Argentina not all institutions have the same abilities to produce, sustain, and use information from diverse sources. On the supply side, public institutions do not always have the capacity to collect reliable and quality data in the short and long term. On the demand side, public debate does not always insist on policy decisions being backed up by evidence.

During the period from 2015 to 2019, the organizational framework enabling monitoring and evaluation (M&E) in Argentina was improved by the enactment of the Access to Public Information Law, the creation of the Congressional Budget Office and the sanction of the Annual M&E Plan implemented by the Office of the Information, Evaluation and Monitoring System of Social Programmes (SIEMPRO) in the National Council for the Coordination of Social Policies (CNCPS). All these regulations constitute significant innovations towards the development of a national evaluation policy. However, a law representing a broader framework for monitoring government activity is still pending.

During this time, the number and quality of institutional actors at the governmental level performing M&E increased. Nevertheless, their budgets are still too limited to exercise these functions in a comprehensive manner. In addition, the practice of M&E advanced in two specific aspects: i) there is more specialization of the monitoring functions towards oversight and administration management; and ii) the evaluation of education and social policies increased. The least developed aspect of the M&E functions is the lack of systematic usage of the collected data. There has not been an institutionalized and regular process through which the lessons learned by M&E lead to changes in policies.

Strengthening and extending the evaluation culture in Argentina requires overcoming these pre-existing challenges in terms of policies, institutions and regulations. To this end, it is necessary to promote a national evaluation policy that integrates and coordinates the M&E functions in a ruling agency under the Chief of Staff, strengthens the culture of evaluation in the National Public Administration (NPA), constructs evaluability parameters for policies, enhances officers´ capacities, ensures quality policies and informs the national development plan.

The Gender of Work is the result of a joint initiative between CIPPEC, the International Labor Organization, UN Women and the United Nations Development Program. It focuses on diagnosing the gender gaps that violate the economic rights of women in Argentina, and to present policy suggestions for removing the obstacles that make it impossible for women’s trajectories in the labor market to be substantively equal to those of men.

In the Latin American context specifically (but not exclusively), there are three key issues that public policies should take into account when attempting to close the gender gaps in the exercise of economic autonomy. These can be summarized as (1) a human-rights perspective on substantive gender equality, that connects it with sustainable development priorities as described in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and approved by the United Nations in 2015; (2) the acknowledgement of intersectionality and interculturality when tackling discriminative societal structures and (3) the principle of integrality as fundamental to the achievement of physical, decision-making, and economic autonomy.

In order to achieve this purpose in consideration of these three main issues, the book and, consequently, this executive summary, are organized as follows. The first section makes a conceptual introduction to the problem of women’s economic autonomy. It includes both definitions and arguments for action. The second section identifies the main gender gaps in the Argentine labor market, which can be classified in three main categories: (1) access to the labor market, (2) quality of employment and work trajectories, and (3) access to leadership positions. The section closes with an analysis of the three main causes behind the gender gaps, mainly, care and unpaid domestic work, gender norms and education. Next, the third section analyses the role of the Argentine State, both at the institutional and at the policy level. Finally, the fourth section summarizes lessons and recommendations to close gender gaps, and it reflects about possible ways forward.

You can find the complete book for download (in Spanish), at cippec.org/egdt

This policy brief summarizes the current challenges facing national governments as they undertake decarbonization policies in line with the objectives of the Paris Agreement. The brief emphasizes three policy themes, including the role of urban climate actions, financing transitions toward decarbonization, and comprehensive metropolitan governance mechanisms. We also present nine policy proposals and consider the implementation of recent policies in Paris.