Costa Rica

In recent years the Government of Costa Rica has recognized the importance of promoting gender equality and women empowerment in the conservation and sustainable use of forests. Costa Rica recognizes that promoting gender equality implies not only mentioning the issue as a priority or as a principle but also prioritizing the identification of relevant gender inequalities and proposing concrete actions to address them. This brief examines how the Government of Costa Rica with support from UNDP is addressing prevalent gender gaps empowering women in the environmental sector and comprehensively integrating gender into environmental policies governance and finance. This in turn has resulted in an innovative and gender-responsive offer of environmental incentives in the country that are scaling up results at an influential level simultaneously increasing women’s economic empowerment promoting sustainable use of forests and combating climate change.

Según datos oficiales (basados en la línea de ingresos) la pobreza en Costa Rica llegó a afectar al 20% de los hogares en 1994 y aparentemente no se habría alejado de forma sustancial de ese valor. En la actualidad se considera que el nivel de pobreza se encuentra estancado en torno al 20% desde hace más de dos décadas. Sin embargo la medición de la pobreza ha sufrido cambios metodológicos que impiden la estricta comparación de los datos en el tiempo. En esta investigación se realiza una propuesta para superar las dificultades metodológicas y obtener una serie de datos de pobreza comparables en el período de 1987 a 2017 con la cual se demuestra que la pobreza en Costa Rica mostró pocas variaciones entre 1994 y 2006 pero se redujo a partir de este último año.

We study cultural spillovers from multinational corporations (MNCs) to domestic companies in the information technology (IT) sector of Costa Rica. Using firm-level panel data for 2001–2011 we explore to what extent domestic firms’ female labour share increases as a result of business operations of MNCs. We find evidence of two channels for cultural spillovers from foreign direct investment (FDI) to domestic IT firms influencing higher shares of female employment: learning (imitation) effects through labour mobility which allows former MNC employees working in domestic firms to apply skills and gender practices from their previous work experience and demonstration effects with the presence of MNCs (through competition in the labour market) which include imitation of social norms and values of MNCs by local firms. No evidence was found for a relationship between backward linkages (purchases) of MNCs from domestic suppliers and female labour share. To promote greater participation by women in labour markets through FDI attraction strengthening cultural spillovers would require implementing FDI promotion policies to (i) enhance the absorptive capacity of domestic IT firms (ii) attract IT MNCs with greater potential to generate spillovers and (iii) foster a favourable national investment climate for enhancing business interactions between IT MNCs and domestic IT firms.

Nicaragua has the second-highest emigration rate in Central America behind El Salvador and 40 per cent of Nicaraguan households receive remittances. In contrast to migrants from other Central American countries however Nicaraguan migrants are more likely to move within the region to Costa Rica than to the United States. This paper is concerned specifically with the implications of migration within Central America for family life. Focusing on the case of Costa Rica and Nicaragua the paper argues that the provision of care in Nicaraguan transnational families occurs in the context of multiple insecurities both historical and contemporary. In this sense migration represents both a solution to the insecure climate of care provision and a source of further insecurity. The paper frames this analysis within scholarship on the privatization of care work caregiving in transnational families and historical patterns of diverse family configurations. It then draws on more than 24 months of ethnographic research between 2009 and 2016 including interviews and participant observation with migrants living in Costa Rica and their families in Nicaragua to show how Nicaraguan families develop strategies based on a history of informal and flexible caregiving. In particular marriage informality and grandmother caregiving are highlighted. While these informal strategies allow families to navigate the challenges migration and family separation entail they also contribute to continued vulnerability and reinforce the gendered burdens of caregiving within transnational families.