The Care Society is a multilateral proposal from the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean that may have a bi-regional expression in cooperation with the European Union, says ECLAC

The event was organized by the Spanish Agency for International Cooperation (AECID) and took place in the city of Montevideo, Uruguay on June 1 and 2, 2023, with the aim of promoting a debate on shared challenges reflected in the common agendas between Latin America and the Caribbean and the European Union, and identify ways of joint action for the construction and consolidation of public policies on care within the framework of social cohesion and the new social contract in the region. The inauguration was attended by Santiago Jiménez Martín, Ambassador of Spain in Uruguay, Pilar Cancela, Secretary of State for International Cooperation in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, European Union and Cooperation of Spain and Martín Lema, Minister of Social Development of Uruguay .

During the opening, Pilar Cancela highlighted the importance of the debate on care today, she referred to the common denominator of aging in societies that further increases pre-existing care needs. For this reason, she assured the commitment of the Spanish Cooperation with gender equality policies linked to Sustainable Development Goal 5 and the promotion of the care agenda. She also expressed Spanish support for bi-regional cooperation through initiatives such as the EU-CELAC Bi-regional Agreement Proposal on care. For his part, Martín Lema affirmed that all people have to carry out care tasks and highlighted the importance of interpersonal care, human care that is given to all people is a general concept that must be replicated in care systems, pointing to the ultimate goal of prosperity.

The Director of ECLAC’s Gender Affairs Division participated in the discussion “A starting point: a regional perspective on care.” “What we have proposed from Latin America and the Caribbean that we have called the care society is a solution from the region to the world,” said the Director at the beginning of her intervention. From Buenos Aires Commitment recently adopted in the XV Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean, referred to the relevance of understanding care as a necessity, a job and a right that is part of already recognized human rights, and the effects of care as a dynamic element of the economy. Care is part of social policy, but it is also a fundamental economic policy, at the same time, it orders the territories and generates obligations to the State. He argued about the need for a financial architecture and taxation that puts care at the center to ensure the sustainability of care systems, something that is being developed in some countries in the region. Ana Güezmes also highlighted the dialogue between the Regional Gender Agenda and the European Care Strategy and highlighted the proposal for a Bi-regional Pact for Care between the two regions to promote cooperation in care, an initiative that is expected to materialize at the next Summit EU-LAC of July 2023 and that is expressed in cooperation programs between countries of both regions.

Karina Batthyany, Executive Director of the Latin American Council of Social Sciences (CLACSO), also participated in this dialogue. She referred to the importance of feminist politics in the debate on care. “We cannot say that we want more equality and more justice from the gender point of view if we do not incorporate the issue of care as a central element. Incorporating it as a central element means betting on defamilizing and defeminizing care ”, she explained. Subsequently, Andrea Costafreda, Director for Latin America and North Africa of Oxfam Intermón assured that we are at a crucial moment in relations between Latin America and the Caribbean and Europe and assured that the main mechanism to guarantee social cohesion in both regions is put life and the right to care agenda at the center of the debates. She agreed that there is no care agenda with transformation capacity if it is not approached from feminism, at the same time, there is no care policy without a cultural change in the social imaginaries that support the symbolic feminization of care.

For her part, the Senior Social Affairs Officer of ECLAC’s Division of Gender Affairs, Lucía Scuro, participated in Dialogue 2 “Towards a care society: redefining care policies”, rescued what was stated in the Commitment to Buenos Aires with respect to the intersectorality and coordination of the State necessary to carry out a public care policy. According to the Official, “The care policy is innovative because it implies a design with intersectoral coordination, comprehensive in its implementation, with citizen participation and co-responsibility.” The space for coordination of these policies must have the participation of the ministries of finance and planning, in the understanding that the sources of financing can be diverse, imply new fiscal architectures and always ensure the financial sustainability of public policy. She also highlighted the experience of the Manzanas del Cuidado in Bogotá, Colombia, which demonstrates a combination of the territorial dimension with a financial sustainability strategy.

Then, Valentina Perrota, Professor and researcher, University of the Republic of Uruguay argued that the redefinition of care policies requires a move towards universality and the defamiliarization and defeminization of care. Also participating was Ana Isabel Arenas, Representative of the Bogota Feminist Economy Roundtable, who proposed moving from looking at care as one of the pillars of social protection to looking at care as a structure and an autonomous system of the health care system. social protection, but in close coordination with him Damaris Ruiz, Regional Director of Programs for Latin America at We Effect Guatemala, affirmed that it is necessary to situate the reference frameworks on care to the realities of the national contexts of each country. For countries like Central America, it is essential to link the care proposal with climate change and its implications, given that the impacts of climatic disasters considerably increase the workload of women and girls. Tania Sánchez, Executive Director of the Bolivian Women’s Coordinating Association highlighted the importance of knowing and understanding care for the sustainability of life from the experience of different territories. Finally, Clara Fassler, Member of the ProCuidados Network of Uruguay, commented that care is multidimensional, and therefore, requires multidimensional and articulated action. He highlighted two important poles that have to dialogue when talking about politics: the pole of political actors who must be aware of the importance of care policy, and the pole of society, which must participate as an interlocutor with the State.