It is necessary to strengthen statistical production and build transformative public policies to move towards a care society, says ECLAC

“It is necessary to strengthen statistical production to make visible the knots of gender inequality and build more transformative public policies to move towards a society of care, a new style of development that prioritizes the sustainability of life.” These were some of the words of the Director of the Division for Gender Affairs of ECLAC, Ana Güezmes, at the opening of the “XXIII International Meeting on Gender Statistics (EIEG). Care at the center of development: statistical opportunities and challenges”, organized by the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI), the National Institute for Women of Mexico (INMUJERES), the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (CEPAL ) and the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women).

The meeting was held between October 5 and 7 in the city of Aguascalientes, Mexico, and was attended by eye specialists, relieve MAM, ONEs and statistics specialists from the entire region. It was also an opportunity to announce the publication “Breaking the statistical silence to achieve gender equality by 2030”, the first joint document of two ECLAC regional conferences – the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean and the Statistical Conference of the Americas –, which contains some experiences of countries in the region in mainstreaming the gender perspective in information systems. This document reveals the current situation of regional statistical production with a gender approach, the factors that have been key to advancing in these developments and includes some experiences that can be considered as promising practices. It is a joint effort that poses, among various issues, new challenges about what to measure to move towards a care society, identifying the types of information necessary for the implementation of public policies that make it possible to make the contributions of care work visible and valued.

In this sense, Ana Güezmes recalled, Latin America and the Caribbean has a series of regional mechanisms to identify regional and subregional challenges and priorities in relation to gender equality and women’s autonomy, as well as for the promotion of statistical development of countries. On the one hand, for 45 years the Regional Conference on Women has highlighted the importance of having timely statistical information to guide the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of public policies to guarantee compliance with the commitments set forth in the Regional Gender Agenda. On the other hand, the Statistical Conference of the Americas recognizes that the production of gender indicators is essential for the proper design of development policies, plans and programs. “The joint work of both intergovernmental forums has promoted and facilitated the construction of key spaces for the development of information systems with a gender perspective.”

During her interventions throughout the International Meeting, Ana Güezmes pointed out that the region has evidence of how to incorporate the gender perspective in the production and analysis of statistical information, and these statistics are being the basis of public policies and budgets oriented towards to the achievement of gender equality in the facts: equality of results. For example, currently at least 23 countries in the region have carried out at least one measurement of time use, 10 have economically valued the unpaid work of households, and 5 have calculated the satellite account of unpaid work in households. This information produced is contributing to the development of policies that respond to the care demands of households and policies that “incorporate the multidimensional measurement of poverty -including time poverty”. The Director also emphasized the progress made in the region in terms of “improving our records on violence against women and in mainstreaming the gender perspective in statistical production.” Along these lines, Güezmes added, it is necessary to continue strengthening statistical production to make visible the knots of gender inequality and build more transformative public policies to move towards a society of care, a new style of development that prioritizes the sustainability of life.

The Director of the Division for Gender Affairs praised the achievements made in the region in terms of gender statistics that allow, among other things, to measure the time that women dedicate to care work. These times of structural crisis that have triggered the largest social and economic crisis in the region, she added, have deepened the structural knots, which has led to an evolution in the way of thinking and producing statistics. “The crisis has allowed us to see how women have been on the front line of the response to the pandemic and has shown us that what really matters is life, time, and care,” she said. In this sense, he added that the pandemic also opened the possibility of expanding the fields of work and reflection, such as measuring the impact that isolation and then distancing have had on society in general, and in particular on women and girls. girls.

Ana Güezmes also recalled that in November the XV Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean, whose main theme will be “The care society as a horizon for a sustainable recovery with gender equality”. In this regard, he said, the Conference “is an opportunity to redefine what is possible and advance in new political and social pacts to advance towards a society of care. Moving towards a transformative recovery with equality and sustainability requires reflecting on what information systems we need to achieve a society of care”.

In this sense, he pointed out that statistics must be the basis of public policies and budgets aimed at achieving gender equality in practice: equality of results, and called for statistical offices and mechanisms for the advancement of women “manage to establish a continuous dialogue and join efforts to revolutionize the way in which information is produced and analyzed, bearing in mind the growing demand for gender statistics”.

Throughout her speeches, Ana Güezmes also emphasized the need to move towards a transformative recovery that makes it possible to overcome gender inequality, for which “fiscal, social, cultural and environmental pacts are needed that allow us to move towards a society of care , a paradigm shift that puts life at the center and leads us towards more just, sustainable and egalitarian societies, with States present and oriented towards strengthening social protection. The care society is the horizon, but also the path for an equitable distribution of power, resources, time and work between women and men”.

The care society, he explained, is a proposal that must be understood as a global, regional, national and local response, with a collective, multi-scalar and intersectional horizon that calls for transformative public policies and cultural change to guarantee care. Along these lines, an intersectoral political governance and management scheme is essential to contribute to the creation of information systems designed with a gender perspective and that places care and time as central components of well-being. “Building an information system for the care society requires dialogue and exchanges, it implies recognizing that the data is a product of the context in which it was produced, as well as the decisions made throughout its collection, processing, analysis and presentation.”

Finally, Ana Güezmes also shared some progress in the framework of the Global Care Alliance, in the framework of which “we agreed to promote the generation of data and evidence and create a network of active participation in the exchange of experiences and best practices in terms of care. As part of this commitment, in alliance with UN Women, INMUJERES and INEGI and the National Administrative Department of Statistics of Colombia (DANE) and the National Institute of Statistics of Chile (INE) “we want to promote a regional platform to debate and share our experiences in statistics for the care society with special attention to the information needs at the subnational and georeferenced level”.

Meeting on time use and unpaid work

Prior to the International Meeting, the “20th International Meeting of Specialists on Time Use and Unpaid Work” was held, which was attended by experts from throughout the region. Within this framework, Ana Güezmes recognized that measurements on the use of time and unpaid work have allowed rethinking the way of measuring people’s well-being and moving towards more united and egalitarian societies. “To continue promoting them, it is necessary to move towards greater comparability of the indicators, generate data with higher quality and more frequently, as well as promote the use of measurements of time use and unpaid work for the implementation of public policies and, accordingly, in this way, move towards a society of care”.

Advances in time use measurements have made it possible to show that women spend 19.6% of their time on unpaid domestic and care work, while men only 7.3%. In other words, they dedicate almost three times as much time to these activities as men. In at least ten countries where it has been measured, this contribution varies between 15.9% and 27.6% of GDP. In other words, in some cases it represents up to more than a quarter of GDP. 74% of this contribution is made by women.

Güezmes added that surveys on the use of time have been an instrument of great value to place the issue of unpaid care work on the equality agenda for women in the region and to support public policies to recognize, redistribute and reduce the cares. In this sense, she called for further progress in the implementation of more robust surveys at the regional level and progress towards the comparability and harmonization of surveys on the use of time in the region. Also, he added, it is necessary to promote the expansion of the representativeness of the surveys on the use of time and possible disaggregations so that the information can be used for the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of public policies at the subnational level and, in To the extent possible, ensure the inclusion of variables that allow analysis of the intersectionalities of inequalities and discrimination.