The care society: Acting today for a better future

October 29, International Day of Care and Support, invites us to reflect and act to build a society that prioritizes the care of people and the planet. We face a development crisis in Latin America and the Caribbean, mired in three major traps: low capacity to grow, high inequality and limited institutional capacity. Given this, ECLAC has documented a persistent care crisis, exacerbated by the aging of the population and the effects of climate change.

In our region, women and girls bear a disproportionate burden of care work, both paid and unpaid. Additionally, we face a chronic underinvestment, infrastructure, and policies that recognize the importance of this work. One in four women in Latin America does not have their own income, almost three times more than men. Half of women are outside the labor market and, of those, more than half do not work for pay due to family and care responsibilities.

The sexual division of labor continues to relegate women to the domestic sphere. Women spend almost three times as much time as men on unpaid domestic and care work. As technologies advance, the demands for care do not decrease. Currently, more than 95 million people over 60 years of age live in the region (14.3% of the population), and this group is expected to represent 25% by 2050. This rapid aging increases long-term care needs , especially for people over 80 years of age, many of them without adequate social protection.

There is an urgent need to design policies that address these growing needs and improve the conditions of those who provide care. These policies must promote co-responsibility between men and women, as well as between households, the State, the community and the private sector. In addition, it is necessary to create quality jobs in the care economy, boosting long-term services and reducing the burden of unpaid work in households. This would not only boost the economy, but also eliminate one of the main obstacles to women’s labor participation.

For job creation in this sector to be effective, it is essential to guarantee decent work, with decent working conditions, formalization and social protection. This is especially relevant for domestic workers and migrants, who tend to be in more precarious work situations.

Latin America and the Caribbean has made progress in care policies and systems in the last decade, standing out for regulatory innovations and improvements in gender statistics, especially in the measurement of time use. Recognizing care as a right and essential work has been key in consolidating this approach. At the regional level, the Regional Gender Agenda, adopted over almost five decades at the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean, has driven this change. In the Brasilia Consensus (2010) the right to care was recognized for the first time, which was reinforced in the Buenos Aires Commitment in 2022.

The focus on care has also gained relevance in other intergovernmental spaces in ECLAC, such as the Montevideo Consensus on Population and Development (2013), the Regional Conference on Aging and the Rights of Older Persons (Asunción 2017 and Santiago 2022), and the Regional Conference on Social Development of Latin America and the Caribbean (2023). These meetings reflect a growing consensus on the need to address care as a pillar for sustainable development.

The care society is the horizon toward which we must advance. Overcoming development traps requires profound transformations that will only be achieved through intergenerational solidarity, strategic investments and regional cooperation. Promoting a society of care invites us to act and build a more inclusive, productive and sustainable future, where the well-being of all people is at the center of our policies.

This call is not only urgent, but also unavoidable. To act today is to sow hope for future generations and ensure that care, in all its forms, is recognized as the foundation of a more just society.