Brazilian Portuguese signed into law by the President on 21 July 2008 allowing for a 6-year adaptation period, during which both orthographies co-existed. All of the CPLP countries have signed the reform. In Brazil, this reform has been in force since January 2016. Portugal and other Portuguese-speaking countries have since begun using the new orthography. Regional varieties of Brazilian Portuguese, while remaining mutually intelligible, may diverge from each other in matters such as vowel pronunciation and speech intonation. The existence of Portuguese in Brazil is a legacy of the Portuguese colonization of the Americas. The first wave of Portuguese-speaking immigrants settled in
Women in the Americas They are well integrated in the nation's cultural and intellectual life. In El Salvador, the percentage of males with at least a secondary education in 2010 was 47.5, compared to females at 40.5 percent. The legal and government institutions that currently exist in Paraguay were developed in part through the efforts of feminist organizations in the country that held significant awareness-raising campaigns during the 1990s to formalize the guarantees of women's rights. During the times when slavery was legal in the Americas, enslaved women were often used as sexual objects and "had no recourse for sexual harm." In Latin America,