nuevas TRENZAS informS
APRIL 2013 N° 15
Economy of Care: Visibilization and Assessment of Women’s Non Remunerated Work Ximena Peña and Camila Uribe Universidad de los Andes Colombia From a perspective of gender, the division of roles in the household has been unbalanced and women have had to bear a heavier workload in terms of non remunerated work. Economy of care refers to household chores, care of children and dependant and sick people, voluntary work, and services provided to other homes and the community, in general without receiving any type of payment. The dedication of women to these activities is not a free and personal decision; it is biased by a series of social, economic, labor and political factors that permeate society. The problem is that unbalance in the division of non remunerated labor affects women directly given that their time needs put them in a position of disadvantage when competing in the labor market. Two events are directly related to that segregation. On one side there are prejudices related to the meaning of working in the home and carrying out care activities. This work is underestimated and it is not acknowledged as it should. On the other side, non remunerated care related work is traditionally considered as a women’s chore. The following is a description of approaches to the assessment of economy of care in Latin America. Processes of female labor assessment being carried out in Mexico, Uruguay and Colombia are studied. Also, policies are analyzed, differentiating between rural and urban areas, and the difficulty of making visible rural women’s non remunerated work in comparison to those who live in urban areas. Latin America in the Process of Making Visible and Assessing Economy of Care In 2002 the first survey about the use of time was carried out in Mexico. In 2009, a second survey was applied. In both years descriptive documents about non remunerated were produced, according to which an estimation of the contribution of economy of care to the domestic GDP was calculated. According to these documents the contribution of economy of care to this country’s GDP corresponds to 21.7 percent for 2009. In the case of Colombia the process of visibilizing was summarized in 2010 in a draft law that forces the accounting and visibilization of economy of care. Since it was established it was possible to start a process with a group from the National Administrative Department of Statistics (Departamento Administrativo Nacional de Estadística – DANE, in Spanish) for creating a new survey that allowed measuring the use of time. In the case of Uruguay, the accounting of the economy of care has been mainly promoted by academia and civil society. In
/Nuevas-Trenzas
@NuevasTrenzas
/nuevastrenzas
Page 1
www.nuevastrenzas.org
2007, it was possible to carry out the survey about the use of time as well as making estimations regarding the economy of care. The results allowed estimating the assessment of non remunerated work in terms of their contribution of the GDP. Rural Women within the Process In Latin America, people living in rural areas represent to 20 percent of the population. Of this group, 48 percent are women and 52 percent are men. As stated previously, women are mainly responsible for the economy of care and household chores. This inequality is more acute in rural areas where non remunerated labor is more demanding, social preconceptions tend to be more enrooted and women have more difficulty seizing opportunities. In this sense, rural women are mainly devoted to work related to the care of their children, household activities such as preparing and growing food for self-consumption, cleaning and taking care of the house. That is why rural women in Latin America are considered a vulnerable population and why there is a desire for promoting economic and social development in these areas. Also, rural population represents about three quarters of the world’s poor population, making these areas the main axis for objectives such as diminishing poverty. Thus, it is considered that enhancing the situation of rural women is a challenge in the fight against poverty and the poverty trap previously described. Rural women are the most affected population because of their work’s low visibility, in which there are two components to be studied. The first refers to the little visibilization of women’s non remunerated labor and the difficulty to measure it. The second refers to the importance of avoiding inequality in the distribution of hours allocated to household chores, especially in rural areas. Making visible rural women’s non remunerated work in Latin America is even more difficult than for the case of urban women. It is difficult to measure the contribution of these women in terms of work; in the measure factors to that must be considered at a rural and agricultural level are different than those of the city. Also, a small portion agricultural production ends up being used for household consumption, something which is not considered non remunerated labor but part of a market oriented production. On the other side, the rural woman is considered a mechanism of production of goods and services. They are the in charge of growing food for the household, breeding animals such as cattle or poultry, providing fuel and water and of the remaining activities comprising the care of the home and its members. Rural women have therefore a greater workload in relation than urban women and both rural and urban men. On the other hand, factors that limit the possibility of rural women entering the labor market such as low access to assets like land or crops, and financial and social resources. Another problem when measuring women’s non remunerated labor is the simultaneity of such activities. This problem is greater in rural areas due to the additional workload these women have. In conclusion, Latin American rural women are the most affected by the lack of visibilization of the economy of care, of resources for diminishing inequality in the hours allocated to non remunerated work. They are also the ones with the greatest load of both remunerated and non remunerated work. Economy of Care Policies in Latin America Public policies focusing on diminishing inequality between remunerated and non remunerated work hours, between men and women, and their side effects must generate a new space for care that does not fall exclusively on women. Taking into account the complexity of social and cultural relations it is necessary to consider a new foundation for the economy of care, which articulates the labor market and the system of productive activities in the home. Public policies related to non remunerated labor comprise, among other, services of care that ease the responsibilities of /Nuevas-Trenzas
@NuevasTrenzas
/nuevastrenzas
Page 2
www.nuevastrenzas.org mothers and housewives in terms of time in the labor market, incentives for changing the social conception of gender roles, and legislation in favor of equality and respect of rights. Also, the follow up of the other governmental policies must not be forgotten, whose evaluation from a gender perspective may create the necessary link for incorporating gender equality into the government’s objectives. Only from the perspective of women’s rights and economic efficiency it will be possible to commit all sectors of the economy in searching for equality in the gendered use of time. For guaranteeing women’s autonomy and making visible their influence in the production of goods and services in the household an inter-institutional care system promoting the co-responsibility between all members of society must be provided. Some initiatives that promote co-responsibility in the home and among all members of society, that may be associated to the economy of care are maternity or paternity licenses, care services for children or seniors, money loans or fiscal benefits for caring for children or seniors, licenses for taking care of ill or dependent people, or pension systems that include women such as accounts for housewives. In the region, policies or legislation for redistributing the use of time are maternity licenses, which exist in 20 countries of Latin America, The Caribbean and the Iberian Peninsula, licenses for pregnant mothers in other 20 countries of the region, paternity licenses in 12 countries, laws for disability in 18 countries, and legislation concerning domestic labor in 4 countries. These laws help foster equality in favor of women and facilitate an egalitarian access to opportunities. In some countries in the world and Latin America more ambitious alternatives are being thought about: integrated care systems. This can be observed in countries like Uruguay. These systems integrate all forms of care needed in the household such as care of the ill, the elderly, children or persons with disabilities. When these integrated systems target their objectives correctly, a wholesome offer of care services that will impact on women’s use of time may be achieved. This, because women have to carry out so much work in their homes that it is necessary that the system covers all the aspects of care, enhancing its own quality and coverage.
/Nuevas-Trenzas
@NuevasTrenzas
/nuevastrenzas
Page 3
www.nuevastrenzas.org
To access the full Spanish version of this document go to Nuevas Trenza’s website.
www.nuevastrenzas.org Nuevas Trenzas is possible thanks to the financial support of:
/Nuevas-Trenzas
@NuevasTrenzas
/nuevastrenzas
Page 4