WUNRN
ECLAC Website - Economic Commission
for Latin America & the Caribbean
Women's Contribution to Equality in Latin America and the Caribbean
The Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) has been monitoring progress of gender-sensitive public policies for more than a decade. Faithful to its mandate, ECLAC has proposed a rights-based development framework in order to produce positive synergies between economic growth and social equity in a context of modernization of production processes.
In the last few years, the Commission has drawn attention to the need to upgrade social protection and ensure universal coverage, the fundamental aim being to establish a fiscal and social covenant which will allow access to social protection mechanisms underpinned by a solidarity-based system of financing.
Against this background, Women’s contribution to equality in Latin America and the Caribbean brings to the fore two key issues in the structural pattern of inequality between women and men: first, political participation and gender parity in decision-making processes at all levels, and, second, women’s contribution to the economy and social protection, especially in relation to unpaid work.
At the tenth session of the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean, as an indication of the progress achieved, the issue of parity will be analysed as an achievable democratic objective. Although there is evidence in all countries of the region of the considerable role played by women throughout political history and, above all, in the past twenty years, the statistics relating to female representation in parliament and in the executive point to the challenge that the political elites of the region must address in order to improve gender balance. The emergence of female leaders within the region, the increasingly independent electoral behaviour of women and the support received by women candidates from female voters are part of the new democratic landscape. Parity is one of the symbols of the new democracies and is presented as an ethical resource for strengthening the legitimacy of democratic institutions.
Section one of this document shows conclusively that women, while accounting for half of the population, have very low rates of representation in most parliaments. Similar discrepancies are visible in the other powers of the State and at decision-making levels as a whole. While the right to vote was won over a period of three decades, between the 1920s and the 1960s, it took almost fifty years to establish women’s right to be actually elected and only in the last few years of the twentieth century was there any significant increase in the number of women elected to public office, mainly thanks to affirmative action, including quota laws, which fortunately have been gaining ground. All the countries that have adopted quota laws have had positive results, as proven by the fact that in some of them the proportion of women elected to public office has increased to around 40%. However, different studies show that, in addition to electoral system reforms, a number of aspects of the political culture which cause discriminatory biases need to be changed. These include inequitable access to financing, the unequal influence of social networks and unfair use of time, which, as shown in the second section of this study, constrains women to focus on reproductive tasks.
In the region, women’s labour income is equivalent to 70% that of men. Despite this disadvantage, women’s contribution is fundamental for alleviating poverty, whether they earn a monetary income or contribute to the home through unremunerated labour; indeed, this contribution becomes a reproductive tax, permitting savings on health costs, childcare and care for older persons in the family, to cite just the most obvious examples. As this study demonstrates, this contribution by women to wellbeing becomes the source of the disadvantages they suffer when they seek to join the labour force in an effort to gain economic independence. The situation is even more serious in the case of women with partners and small children to take care of who are forced to put off further training and access to the labour market and who, as a result, have to do without the social protection that is part and parcel of this labour market.
The results obtained in five countries of the region demonstrate that men spend almost the same number of hours on unpaid housework, whether or not there is a “homemaker”. On the other hand, for the women of these same households, there is an important difference: the fact that another person carries out domestic chores reduces substantially the time that they spend on such chores. All women, irrespective of their employment status, devote a significant amount of time to caregiving, which proves how inappropriate it is to describe a homemaker as “non-working”.
The difficulty experienced by women in finding a suitable position in the labour market extends to their life as citizens and the world of politics in which, as already mentioned, notwithstanding some advances in the past decade, they have achieved a minority representation in parliament, in the executive branch and in other powers of the State.
This document highlights the possibilities of generating virtuous circles that favour universal access to social protection, provided that policies are implemented to promote equality in the labour market, the family and politics. A number of countries have made commendable efforts in this direction.
According to available information, only measures geared explicitly to achieving equality in the public and private spheres will be successful in achieving the Millennium Development Goals and particularly, goal 3, which is to promote gender equality and empower women.
Women’s contribution to equality in Latin America and the Caribbean sets out active policies for overcoming the obstacles to equitable access to the labour market, especially those arising from the sexual division of labour which has become established through usage and the frequent discriminatory practices observed on the labour market. The abundant quantitative evidence collected and analysed points conclusively to the need for policies that foster shared responsibility between men and women in caring for members of the household, especially children, as well as for more comprehensive public action (by the State and the business sector) to facilitate the work of caring for the sick, older persons and the disabled.
Lastly, it should be noted that this document is part of a long ECLAC tradition which has sought to promote genuine gender equality within the framework of its efforts to reduce inequity in the different spheres of economic, social and political life in our region.
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(7 August 2007) Gender parity, more than
a quantitative concept, refers to the redistribution of power in three
specific spheres: the labour market, decision-making and family life. The
sexual division of labour is a source of inequality between women and men. So
states ECLAC in its document "Women's Contribution to
Equality in Latin America and the Caribbean," presented to the 10th
Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean
currently underway in Quito, Ecuador. This
document examines women's contributions to the economy and social protection,
especially in relation to unpaid work, which -- unlike paid employment -- has
been largely absent from historical analysis, economic studies and public
policies. While
women's entry into the labour market is widely viewed as one of the 20th
century's most important trends, profound inequalities continue to
characterize women's work, with least 50% of women over the age of 15 having
no income of their own, as compared to 20% of men. In
the region, women's labour income is equivalent to 70% that of men. Women
also receive lower pensions and suffer from inequality under social security
systems. Despite
this disadvantage, women's contribution is fundamental for alleviating
poverty, whether they earn a monetary income or contribute to the home
through unpaid labour. Women's access to the job market is conditioned by the
so-called "reproductive tax" of unpaid work at home, product of the
unwritten agreement that universally enshrines men in the role of family
provider and women as caregivers. The
ECLAC document underscores the need to broaden the concept of work. Work
is not employment. As a human activity, work includes both paid activities
carried out within the framework of the marketplace and the unpaid ones
conducted outside its margins. Social well-being and economic growth are both
generated by the labour of women and men, paid and unpaid. Domestic
"service" is the main source of employment for women in Latin
America and the Caribbean, and included in most labour codes. However, there
has been a tendency to regulate domestic work without regard for or
recognition of the acquired rights accruing to most wage earners in other
types of employment. This highlights the particular vulnerability of the
region's poorest women, who form the ranks of domestic workers and face
greater exploitation in terms of working hours and pay. Unpaid
domestic work - which refers to caregiving activities on behalf of children,
the sick and the elderly, falls largely to women. According to
information from ECLAC, of the average 12 hours that women work daily,
over five is devoted to caregiving, whereas men work an average of 10.7
hours, of which 7.8 are paid. The
increasing demand for care has important implications for public policies.
The sustained growth in the numbers of elderly, for example, is taking
place in societies that have yet to create the necessary conditions to
accommodate this trend and face its repercussions. According
to the document, public policies are needed to create incentives for shared
responsibility between women and men in both the public and private spheres,
to facilitate the workload of both sexes, improve the conditions of women's
entry into the labour market, and encourage the active participation of men
in unpaid domestic chores. Time
use surveys are a useful instrument for analyzing work, taking into account
the links between the public and private domains, and for studying the
"social contract" that governs day-to-day relations between men and
women in homes and society. This information can provide valuable input
for the formulation of equitable public policies. The
reconciliation of family and work is now part of the public agenda. According
to the mechanisms for the advancement of women, there is a need to harmonize
family and work through legislation, public policies and programmes such as
childcare services and leave from work for breastfeeding mothers. |
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