Women in Latin America and the Caribbean - Cepal

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99 employee for family reasons. The duration of this leave is decided on in consultation with the employer, however, so that it may not always satisfactorily meet the worker’s needs. State provision of early childcare is inadequate in most of the region’s countries, the exceptions being Uruguay and Cuba. Private provision caters only to an extremely small number of people. In these circumstances, the women in families with newborn children provide a de facto social safety net. The recipients of care, in this case children, pay the price for family adjustment and the lack of State provision. Differences in the care children receive exacerbate social inequalities, and the opportunity for and quality of care will determine their future. Despite this, most countries only recognize care needs from the age of six, when children begin school. The existence of day-care centres or crèches is related to the third key component: childcare services for the children of working people. The regulations on childcare facilities attached to the workplace vary enormously from one country to another, but the great majority oblige employers to provide such facilities based on the number of female workers they employ. The law therefore not only assumes that it will be the working mother who brings her child to work, but also allows them to restrict the number of women they employ to avoid the extra burden of providing a new childcare facility. In Argentina, article 179 of Law No. 20744 on employment contracts obliges employers to provide mother and baby rooms and day-care centres based on the number of female workers employed. No implementing regulations were ever issued for this article. Law No. 11317 established that this obligation applied to companies employing more than 50 female workers aged over 18; subsequently, Law No. 20582 provided for the creation of district nurseries for the children of mothers aged under 18. However, no implementing regulations were issued for either of these provisions and they are not applied in a coordinated way; nor is there any system for ensuring that a woman’s children are cared for while she is at work. Some collective labour agreements recognize the right to use of a day-care centre or to financial compensation in the absence of such a facility. In Costa Rica, employment legislation does not provide for day-care facilities in the workplace. It does, however, guarantee that “all breastfeeding mothers shall be entitled in the workplace to a break of 15 minutes every three hours or, if they prefer, half an hour twice a day during working hours so that they may feed their infants, unless a medical certificate can be produced to show that they only require a shorter break” (article 97 of the Labour Code). In Puerto Rico, Public Law 155 obliges government agencies in their capacity as employers to provide an appropriate place (not the ladies’ room) for the extraction of breast milk. 52 Varied as they are, all these laws apply discriminatory criteria that differentiate the ability of men and women to look after small children, the sick and older adults. This is particularly striking in the case of older adults, since labour regulations make no provision for their care other than to provide for a pension if they have contributed to the pension system as wage-earning employees. However, there is no provision for male and female workers to care for their parents, although this is becoming increasingly necessary as the lifespan of older adults in the region increases. Other than in the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, whose Constitution establishes that “the father and mother have a duty to raise, bring up (…) their children, and those children have a duty to assist them when they can no longer care for themselves” 52 Report of the Women’s Procurator of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico presented at the subregional preparatory meeting for Central America and Mexico for the tenth session of the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean, Guatemala City, 17 and 18 May 2007.
100 (article 76), leave of absence (of between one and three days, depending on the country) is granted only upon the death of a parent or parent-in-law. However, some countries have adopted policy measures that are worth highlighting. This is the case with Costa Rica, where the Policy for Gender Equality and Equity was presented on 8 March 2007. This policy is planned for a 10-year period and built around six core strategies. The first of these is “care for the family as a social responsibility and recognition of the value of household work” and it is laid down as a goal that by 2017 every woman requiring childcare services in order to be able to carry out paid work should have at least one high-quality public, private or mixed childcare option available. To this end, it was decided that efforts should be concentrated in two areas: (i) the creation of a social care infrastructure, which inevitably means expanding the coverage and improving the quality of the services currently on offer, and (ii) the promotion of cultural changes that lead to more responsibility being shared between women and men. 53 The National Action Plan launched by Cuba to follow up the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women contains 90 measures designed to mainstream the gender perspective in all areas of State action and to identify the agencies or ministries responsible. In this way, the country has addressed issues such as employment segregation, access to managerial positions, women’s integration into the labour market and shared responsibility for reproductive obligations. Regarding sexual and reproductive rights, there are 14 principal measures concerned with shared responsibility in sexual and family life and with training and adaptation measures for education and health service staff with a view to meeting women’s needs. The legislation guarantees working mothers 18 weeks’ paid maternity leave. After this they can continue to care for their child until its first birthday without forfeiting their employment, during which time they will be entitled to social security benefits equivalent to 60% of their former pay. They are also entitled to split the leave with the father, at the couple’s discretion. In the case of unpaid care work, mothers who have children with a disability will continue to be paid the same wage in recognition of the care they are providing (Aguilar, 2002; UNDP, 2005). The European Union has devised a basic set of nine indicators, some quantitative and others qualitative, to follow up the Beijing Platform for Action agreements on harmonization of family and working life. As a report produced for the European Parliament (Almenara Estudios Económicos y Sociales, 2004) points out, the most interesting feature is that time use is the basic unit in six of the nine indicators, while others refer to aspects of care for children and dependent adults and one deals generally with integrated policies, especially those concerning employment. Although in some cases they would need adapting to the situation in Latin America and the Caribbean, the indicators proposed merit consideration for the region, as several of them can be calculated from information already available (see box II.11). Experiences of successful policies in this area do not abound in the region, although there have been major advances such as the code of good practice for the public sector in Chile, the model for recognition of businesses as “family-responsible employers” by the Secretariat of Labour and Social Provision in Mexico, responsible fatherhood rules in Costa Rica and several occupational training programmes for women. International experience indicates that certain long-term measures introduced as part of a comprehensive gender equality strategy can narrow the gap between men and women. 53 Report by the Government of Costa Rica presented at the subregional preparatory meeting for Central America and Mexico for the tenth session of the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean, Guatemala City, 17 and 18 May 2007.
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LC/L.2738(CRM.10/3) August 2007 The
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1 FOREWORD The Economic Commission
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3 INTRODUCTION The women of Latin A
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5 essentially not on biological fac
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8 Convention, but the process has b
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10 among development, security and
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12 Another sphere of democratic deb
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14 to articulate their efforts in i
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16 boundaries between human, reprod
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18 relatively less powerful, new gl
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20 universalist school’s argument
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22 democratic movements, gradually
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24 Table I.2 LATIN AMERICA (20 COUN
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26 In many countries, a new collect
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28 In Costa Rica the quota issue be
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30 Table I.3 LATIN AMERICA AND THE
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32 The differences between the resu
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34 Figure I.4 LATIN AMERICA AND THE
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36 Figure I.6 CARIBBEAN (11 COUNTRI
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38 Figure I.9 CARIBBEAN (9 COUNTRIE
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40 Women’s entry to parliament ca
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42 Figure I.10 LATIN AMERICA AND TH
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44 Figure I.12 THE CARIBBEAN (10 CO
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46 Figure I.14 LATIN AMERICA (15 CO
Page 51 and 52: 48 Table I.6 LATIN AMERICA AND THE
Page 53 and 54: 50 was from 9% to 1.3%, Jamaica (fr
Page 55 and 56: 52 agencies at the highest level an
Page 58 and 59: 55 II. WOMEN’S CONTRIBUTION TO TH
Page 60 and 61: 57 more concerned with the ethic of
Page 62 and 63: 59 Box II.1 THE WORK OF CARE IN SOC
Page 64 and 65: 61 of care on women mounts up. This
Page 66 and 67: 63 conditions of employment of work
Page 68 and 69: 65 social security and social benef
Page 70 and 71: 67 disincentive to their recruitmen
Page 72 and 73: 69 seeks to reform the constitution
Page 74 and 75: 71 Box II.4 REGULATION OF EMPLOYMEN
Page 76 and 77: 73 those in rural areas (42.1%), wh
Page 78 and 79: 75 sex and activity (see figure II.
Page 80 and 81: 77 Figure II.4 LATIN AMERICA (SIMPL
Page 82 and 83: 79 Figure II.7 LATIN AMERICA (SIMPL
Page 84 and 85: 81 Box II.6 HAITI. DOMESTIC WORKERS
Page 86 and 87: 83 It is interesting to characteriz
Page 88 and 89: 85 care to the “productive” adu
Page 90 and 91: 87 Box II. 7 (concluded) To sum up,
Page 92 and 93: 89 are also inaccurate, which widen
Page 94 and 95: 91 Some progress has been made sinc
Page 96 and 97: 93 Figure II.15 AVERAGE HOURS SPENT
Page 98 and 99: 95 Country Costa Rica El Salvador G
Page 100 and 101: 97 domestic life is shared between
Page 104 and 105: 101 In the private sphere, there ha
Page 106 and 107: 103 Table II.4 SEVEN SELECTED CITIE
Page 108 and 109: 105 Box II.12 EXAMPLES OF SOCIAL SE
Page 110 and 111: 107 III. TOWARDS A RESEARCH AND POL
Page 112 and 113: 109 (iii) Contribute to the mainten
Page 114 and 115: 111 Appendix TECHNICAL NOTES The st
Page 116 and 117: 113 Household survey information al
Page 118 and 119: 115 sub-module “home maintenance
Page 120 and 121: 118 _____ (2003), "Políticas para
Page 122 and 123: 120 Carrasco, Cristina (2001), “H
Page 124 and 125: 122 _____ (2003b), “Redes de apoy
Page 126 and 127: 124 Huenchuan, Sandra and José Mig
Page 128 and 129: 126 Montaño, Sonia (2007a), “Emp
Page 130 and 131: 128 Rico, María Nieves (2006), “
Page 132: 130 _____ (1979), Convention on the
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