ECLAC calls for the implementation of public policies and investments that free up the time, unpaid work and debts of women

The countries of the region are advancing in proposals for care systems, in the costing of services and solutions required by each city and each country, in surveys to measure the use of time. There are several examples of public policies and regulations to reverse the sexual division of labor and the unfair social organization of care. However, the response to the care crisis is not yet at the center of public policies, nor is it in recovery policies. It is not yet a trend at the regional level and it is still urgent: that governments implement strategic investments to solve and promote care policies.

These reflections were part of the presentation that the Director of Gender Affairs of ECLAC made in the panel “Contemporary debates on care”, within the framework of the Forum on “The society of care and policies of life” of the 9th Conference of CLACSO. The panel was also made up of Francisco Cos-Montiel, a researcher at the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD). Switzerland, Cecilia Alemany, Deputy Regional Director of UN Women for the Americas and the Caribbean, Javier A. Pineda Duque, from the Interdisciplinary Center for Development Studies, Colombia, under the moderation of Valentina Perrotta, from the Gender Sociology Group, Faculty of Social Sciences, UDELAR, Uruguay.

Ana Güezmes presented an overview of the progress made in the region in terms of care and also referred to the challenges that persist, to the issues that are not yet part of the agenda or public policies. In this sense, she indicated that faced with the need to break the statistical silence and measure the dimensions of care, “we are generating information on time, work and the economic value of care. We know that the contribution of care work to the production and development of countries is enormous. The countries of the region that have measured the economic value of unpaid household work indicate that it would represent between 15.7% and 24.2% of GDP and that it is women who contribute close to 75% of this value” .

Ana Güezmes referred to the importance of measuring the use of time, already carried out in 15 countries of the region, which shows the overload of unpaid work of women and the incompatibility for many of them of unpaid care work and the Labor journeys. Likewise, the characterization of the demand for care, the supply and the conditions in which care is provided is necessary to develop policies that can anticipate how these demands will be met and what combination of care is required.

Likewise, the Director of Gender Affairs highlighted that the region has an ambitious, comprehensive and progressive Regional Gender Agenda, which is based on the commitments that the Governments have approved at the Regional Conferences on Women. In the last 45 years, she recalled, governments have approved a series of agreements that include measures on the design of policies for care, the call for co-responsibility of care between the State, the private sector, families and the community. “These are agreements that value the generation of information about time, work and the economic value of care, and the commitment to generate comprehensive care systems from a gender, intersectionality, interculturality and human rights perspective.” She also reaffirms the relevance of promoting the financial sustainability of public care policies aimed at achieving gender equality.

These commitments, Ana Güezmes pointed out, have translated into important advances. However, care continues to be absent from the heart of development policies, “there has been a constant lack of financing to face the growing demand for care and the deepening of gender inequalities”.

The pandemic made women’s labor participation even more precarious. This impact on the lives and autonomy of women is closely related to the care work that falls mostly on them. As a result of the pandemic, the care workload of households – and especially of women – increased substantially. Even before the outbreak of COVID-19 and the lockdown, women spent three times as much time on average as men on care work.

The pandemic affected women’s monetary poverty and time poverty. ECLAC has verified a worsening in the indebtedness to which women resort, what has been called “feminization of debt”. This indebtedness is given through credits to finance food, basic services and other needs of their homes, as an extension of the care responsibilities assigned to them. The increase in the care workload has also been greater in lower-income households.

But the devastating effects of the prolonged social crisis do not end there. In addition to this, the environmental crisis that generates the destruction of biodiversity persists. As occurs with care work, environmental degradation and climate change also impact men and women differently.

Although a slow post-pandemic recovery is observed, it is uneven in terms of the labor participation of men and women. Added to this, Latin America and the Caribbean faces a complex situation due to the war in Ukraine. According to new ECLAC estimates, an average growth of 1.8% is expected for the region, lower than the 2.1% projected in January 2022.

Faced with this panorama, Ana Güezmes made a call to think and build a new social configuration “that values ​​essential activities for sustaining life, that reverses gender, socioeconomic, ethnic and territorial inequalities and protects the environment. It is urgent to move towards a change in the style of development that counteracts the precariousness of jobs in general and, in particular, those related to the care sector and makes visible the multiplier effects of care in terms of well-being and as a dynamic sector for recovery transformative with equality and sustainability”.

She recalled that ECLAC has called for speeding up the path towards economic, environmental and gender justice, and moving towards a care society that prioritizes the sustainability of life, of the planet and that guarantees the rights of people who require care, as well as as well as the rights of the people who provide such care. As a propositional notion, he explained, the care society “contributes to rethinking the way in which society is organized and exposes the way in which it has become an unsustainable and unequal model. The care society is a horizon that supposes a collective and multidimensional construction”.

In order to advance towards a society of care, it is necessary to “strengthen public income and expand public spending aimed at advancing in the financing of gender equality policies and the guarantee of women’s rights.” In particular, with measures to advance towards universal social protection systems, such as transfers, unemployment insurance and universal access to quality services in education, health and care.

What ECLAC is proposing, he added, is a social pact for recovery and development with equality and sustainability that also deserves a fiscal pact. It is a fiscal pact that can contribute simultaneously and synergistically to the objectives of economic reactivation and closing gaps. Our societies urgently require that governments and multilateral organizations agree on a strategic recovery with sufficiency, progressiveness and equality. “It is about designing commercial, productive, labor policies, provision of care services and other public investments that free up time, unpaid work and women’s debts,” she concluded.

Between November 7 and 11, the Fifteenth Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean will be held in Argentina. The central theme of this meeting will be “The care society: horizon for a sustainable recovery with gender equality”. To build collectively, he concluded, “I call on governments and international actors to build fiscal, social and cultural pacts to allocate resources and propose new social configurations that have care as the backbone. I am sure that societies like the one we are proposing will make all people live better”.