By: Staff Writer
November 15, 2022
The COVID-19 pandemic and fallout coupled with the war in the Ukraine and its fallout, is having a significant effect on gender equality and women’s issues that is hampering their ability to care for the next generation a United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) report says.
ECLAC, in its report, “The care society A horizon for sustainable recovery with gender equality,” says that when state provision is insufficient to cover the population’s care needs, households that have the resources to obtain care services in the market do so by hiring domestic service, home caregivers and private institutions. In contrast, lower-income households rely on women’s reproductive work, which limits their access to the labour market and shows how care becomes a key issue in understanding socioeconomic inequalities.
“In this situation, the prevailing development model in Latin America and the Caribbean has led to ever wider social, economic and environmental gaps, which are closely interrelated. It has also triggered a profound care crisis, with serious implications for the well-being of the population and the capacity to strengthen a development pattern based on equality and sustainability. Far from resolving the structural challenges of gender inequality, the model has deepened the social, ethnic, racial and territorial inequalities that diminish women’s autonomy, particularly among women who are affected simultaneously by different dimensions of social inequality.”
Lower income families in the region had a tough time taking care of their families in the better times, but now with compounding crises, things are even more challenging as they try to raise the next generation. The issue of who should care is an ongoing debate, with conservative thinking people believing the family should be the primary and ultimate caregiver while other left leaning thinkers believe caregiving should be a community and hence, state wide burden as a collective.
The report also said: “The social organization of care thus reflects a social and political construction, based on a specific cultural framework, in which there are different worldviews as to what should be cared for, who should provide care, and how it should be provided. For example, indigenous peoples conceive their social organization as directly linked to environmental care; care also includes a spiritual dimension; and interdependence is built on respecting people’s autonomy and valuing all lives, human or otherwise.”
It added: “Sustainability of the planet requires a development pattern that places care at the centre of priorities; recognizes the interdependence that exists between people, and between people and the environment; and distinguishes the multiple interdependencies with the economic, the cultural and the socio-environmental”
Ultimately, the report advocated: “…The role of the State is decisive. In addition to having the capacity to provide care services, it is tasked with regulating care provision by markets, communities and families. In doing so, it can either transform the unfair social organization of care, by promoting gender equality, women’s autonomy and co-responsibility for care; or else it can reproduce historical gender and class inequalities. The human rights framework provides the legal foundations for placing care at the centre, while highlighting the State’s role in this.”
While the state does have a role to play, how central should this role be is the consideration we must grapple with.
People on the lower economic spectrum see the state as this all empowering entity when often times the state is left to fend for itself by weeding out nefarious actors out of its system, which in itself is no easy task.
Turning to the need the report noted that for the Caribbean, “According to a study conducted in five Caribbean countries (Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Guyana, Jamaica and Saint Lucia), the supply of childcare services is limited and consists mainly of private facilities, which cannot keep up with the demand despite their high cost. Childcare services operate during the hours of a typical workday (approximately between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m., Monday to Friday), which poses a challenge for those working in sectors with atypical working hours. Some jobs with high levels of participation by women (such as tourism) occur at times or on days when care services are not available; these workers must then resort to informal care arrangements in order to balance their work schedules with family responsibilities.
“For example, in Saint Lucia, women in low-income households who are engaged in paid employment and cannot afford childcare rely on support from their mothers or send their children to live in another household, a relatively widespread phenomenon known as child-shifting. In Antigua and Barbuda, where the proportion of single-parent households headed by women stands at 41 percent, the lack of a public preschool education system takes a significant toll on women.”