COMMUNITY

Civil society warns of setbacks in gender parity during the CEDAW Committee’s evaluation of the Argentine State

Geneva, February 10, 2026. During the 92nd session of the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), the Argentine State underwent a periodic review marked by warnings from civil society about a systemic setback in equality policies.

The GQUAL Campaign, together with Amnesty International Argentina, ELA, the Women’s Network for Justice, CEJIL, and academic teams from the University of Buenos Aires (UBA) and the National University of La Plata (UNLP), placed special emphasis on the equal participation of women in decision-making spaces.

During the hearing, the organizations pointed out that the Argentine State dismantled fundamental institutions, repealed regulations that promoted parity in international candidacies and diplomatic posts, and avoided promoting women to the Supreme Court of Justice despite a historic record of underrepresentation.

The assessment confirmed a critical gap marked by a pattern of vertical segregation in which men are up to 3.7 times more likely to reach the highest ranks.

The most emblematic case of this disparity is the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation, a court that in 162 years of history has had only three female members compared to an overwhelming majority of 104 male judges. Far from reversing this underrepresentation, the executive branch chose to fill the current vacancies with exclusively male candidates, describing gender diversity as a “non-exclusive requirement” and thus disregarding international mandates on substantive equality.

The gender parity deficit is a structural phenomenon that permeates the entire state organization, from a Cabinet Office centralized in male leadership to a ministerial cabinet where women occupy less than a third of the portfolios (30.8%). This inequality becomes absolute at the provincial level, given the total absence of female governors and the prevalence of local cabinets that fail to meet the minimum standard for female participation.

Finally, this setback directly affects the equal participation of women in international representative spaces, both diplomatic and in international bodies and mechanisms.

At GQUAL, we note that after becoming the first country in the region to establish a transparent, participatory, and gender-balanced process for nominating international candidates, Argentina repealed this mechanism in July 2025, explicitly eliminating the criteria of parity, diversity, and participation. This decision represented a serious setback, especially considering that this process had increased the representation of women from 33% in 2022 to 77% in 2024.

“Repealing a transparent process that incorporated parity criteria in nominations for international positions is not a minor adjustment: it weakens guarantees of equality, compromises the representation of the State, and conflicts with Article 8 of the Convention,” said Agatha Ciancaglini Troller, Advocacy Coordinator at GQUAL, during her appearance.

Even though these setbacks erode democratic quality, weaken institutional legitimacy, and reduce the capacity of public authorities to guarantee rights, during the review, the Argentine State avoided direct answers to several of the questions posed by the Committee on this situation and relied on arguments incompatible with its international obligations, stating, for example, that parity and temporary special measures would be contrary to merit or even reinforce stereotypes that are harmful to women.

This defense, however, is based on a false premise: merit cannot be evaluated on equal terms when there are structural inequalities that systematically exclude women from positions of power. Measures that promote parity and representativeness not only guarantee substantive equality, but also strengthen the legitimacy and impact of institutions and broaden the range of experiences and expertise that nourish them.

The CEDAW Committee’s General Recommendation No. 40 is explicit in this regard: parity measures do not replace suitability criteria, but rather correct historical, institutional, and cultural biases that have distorted the very notion of merit for decades. The persistent exclusion of women from top decision-making positions is not due to a lack of capacity, but to structures that have limited their access, visibility, and recognition.

Following this review, GQUAL and the coalition of signatory organizations will continue to monitor the recommendations issued by the Committee to the Argentine State, with the aim of reversing the setbacks that currently threaten the human rights of women and diverse groups.

Note: During the Argentine State’s appearance before CEDAW, various organizations made contributions to alert the Committee to the challenges and setbacks facing the human rights situation of various vulnerable groups in Argentina.

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