Panama updates
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Panama, famous for its canal and infamous as an offshore financial centre, now wants to earn a different reputation: as a beacon of female empowerment in Latin America.
Six of the 16 ministers in the Panamanian cabinet are women and the Central American country has set a quota of 30 per cent female participation for boards of state companies, an unusual step in the region’s male-dominated corporate world.
“We had historically family-run businesses with no women participating in them, at least at the high-level positions, and the same with the government,” said Erika Mouynes, a US-trained former corporate lawyer who is Panama’s foreign minister. “So we took . . . a more holistic approach: not just the government or not just private sector, everybody needs to comply.”
Panama’s President Laurentino Cortizo won the 2019 election as an anti-establishment outsider…