By: Staff Writer
August 15, 2025
The Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) in a new report highlights the growing demand in crisis care is evident with the amount of conflicts around the Latin America and Caribbean (LAC).
The report, “The Care Society: Governance, Political Economy and Social Dialogue for a Transformation with Gender Equality,” said that: “Latin America and the Caribbean is facing a number of development traps that present significant obstacles to a more productive, inclusive and sustainable future: first, low capacity for growth; second, high inequality, low social mobility and weak social cohesion; and third, weak institutional capacities and ineffective governance to address development challenges.
“The care crisis is reflected in growing demand —exacerbated by population ageing and the effects of climate change— that far surpasses the service, infrastructure and personnel capacity available for the provision of care. This crisis disproportionately affects women, particularly those who face multiple and interrelated forms of discrimination, including women living in poverty, those in rural areas, and women who are Indigenous, Afrodescendent, living with disabilities, older, or in situations of human mobility or conflict.
The report also said: “Conceiving of care as a public good and a policy priority focuses attention away from the private and towards the public sphere, underscoring in particular the role of the State as guarantor of the right to care in the human rights framework.”
At the XVI Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean, President of Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo, stressed the need to recognize the contribution and the rights of all women and to avert rollbacks at a national, regional and global level. “I know that this is not only the time for women in Mexico, but throughout the world,” said the country’s leader, who reviewed the constitutional and legal reforms, policies and measures that her Government has carried out in various areas to ensure gender equality, women’s autonomy and the building of a comprehensive care system.
“Recognizing each other as women, no matter what space we are in, is critical. And recognizing those who historically have been denigrated and abandoned is a job for all people. That is why we have dedicated this year, the first year of our government, to indigenous women, and each year will be a year for a heroine from our homeland,” she stated.
Sheinbaum affirmed that “once rights are won, the people no longer allow for there to be rollbacks.” She explained that saying this is the time for women means that women’s rights be fully recognized: the right to study, to health, to have a life free of violence.
The conference also had as one of its central topics was the relationship between care, territories, and environmental sustainability in Small Island Developing States (SIDS), considering the impacts of climate change, their intersection with care, and the need for integrated responses that take territorial specificities into account. The discussions highlighted the importance of incorporating a gender perspective into climate change strategies, given that many solutions implemented often exacerbate the unequal burden of unpaid domestic and care work, which disproportionately falls on women. Research presented at the Forum demonstrated that climate change and disasters continue to severely affect Caribbean societies and economies, with significant impacts on women who perform most of the care work in disaster contexts.
Another key issue addressed was the right to care and decent work. Participants reaffirmed care as a human right and analyzed the challenges of improving labour conditions in the sector, reducing precarity, and recognizing the contribution of care work to social well-being. The role of union organization was emphasized as a means to advance decent work in the sector, particularly for paid domestic work. Discussions also focused on regulatory frameworks aimed at formalizing care work and ensuring access to social protection for care workers.
A third major theme of relevance in the Caribbean was health as a care-related sector and its link to human mobility. The Forum highlighted the outmigration of health professionals seeking better-paid jobs, which undermines the local capacity of health systems in Caribbean countries and affects care provision and development policies in SIDS.