“The discussion about care is central to overcoming inequalities”
(Transcription of Karina Batthyány's column)
(In InfoCLACSO – April 26, 2023)
We are in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, at the International Forum on Care Society and Policies of Life, topics that are central to CLACSO and are part of the strategies we are promoting in the Platforms for Social Dialogue.
In Santo Domingo, we've held a postgraduate school focused on care and gender issues, in addition to several ongoing dialogues among the target audiences of our Platforms for Social Dialogue: the academic sector, the public policy sector, and social movements and organizations. We're discussing care policies in the Dominican Republic, but also in the Caribbean in general, because the discussion then continues in Cuba.
Why care policies? Because the issue of care has become the critical crux of social inequalities, and particularly gender inequalities. That is why countries in the Latin American and Caribbean region are making progress in formulating and implementing actions and policies to put care at the center and make this discussion a central issue for overcoming inequalities. Latin America and the Caribbean remains the most unequal region on the planet.
– The events in the Dominican Republic and Cuba are highlighting necessary aspects of a topic under discussion throughout Latin America, despite its divergences and different approaches. What has happened in recent years, particularly with the pandemic, regarding caregiving, and why is this issue so central in Latin America today?
– This is an issue that has taken root in different ways throughout our region, perhaps with varying degrees of emphasis. Today, specifically, we have at least 14 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean that are discussing or implementing care policies. While the realities may differ in many ways, there is one area where similarities emerge: in our region, caregiving remains the responsibility of families, and within families, of women. Data from across the region and from each individual country shows that women perform 80% of unpaid care work.
This has consequences from many perspectives. On an individual level, it affects the ability of women with caregiving responsibilities to pursue other activities in their lives, such as education, work, and political and social participation. But it also has consequences at an aggregate level, that is, at a social level or for broader groups, in terms of the inequalities that disproportionately impact women due to this caregiving burden.
What inequalities? For example, the different participation in the labor market: it's clear that if I have to care for young children 40 hours a week, I'm going to have less time available to be in the labor market, and that explains the gap in the female-to-male economically active population. This has consequences for income, so once women manage to enter the labor market, they earn less. But it also has consequences for the organization of daily life.
What do we want? We want to put this discussion at the forefront because we want new forms of social organization of care, where care is redistributed at the micro level among the people who make up the different households in our region, but above all at the macro level. And we want to call upon the states and governments of our countries to fulfill their corresponding responsibilities. The path forward lies in designing public policies that incorporate the issue of care and give it the status that has already been recognized in some countries: understanding care as a right.
– In this context, the scope of these types of meetings and events highlights the underlying logic of Platforms for Social Dialogue, such as social movements, public policy, and academia. How has this fundamental triad functioned within the framework of this forum in the Dominican Republic to generate change and modification?
Each of the dialogues we have held in the Dominican Republic has included discussions between academics from various Latin American and Caribbean countries, participants in the country's public policy, and members of social movements and organizations. This is the kind of dialogue we must promote to address this issue, understanding once again that our goal is to move toward more just, democratic, and equitable societies. This issue is at the heart of the inequalities that exist in our region today.
Participation in this International Forum has been very broad, and the dialogues have been very productive. Furthermore, it was accompanied by a training program, in which more than 120 people from universities, unions, social organizations, and public prosecutors participated in our postgraduate school, and it has been truly very productive.
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