Women in Latin America and the Caribbean - Cepal

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more concerned with the ethic of justice prevailing in the public sphere (Hierro, 1998). 22 The concept of
“extreme individualism” in philosophy is equivalent to the “rational economic man” in economics. 23
An analysis based on the public-private dichotomy masks the decisive impact that decisions taken
in the public sphere have on the most intimate aspects of people’s lives. The process of women’s
emancipation has gradually shifted the boundary between the two worlds. Not only have women gone out
to work and study, but progress with human rights has led to standards and institutions concerning
themselves with the private sphere so that they now regulate conjugal life, birth rates, gender violence and
innumerable other aspects that have brought the rights principle into the heart of the family. Similarly,
changing family structures —the shift from the extended to the nuclear and one-parent family— have
altered economic and political arrangements and affected the organization of labour. Changes in women’s
aspirations, as they increasingly seek greater economic, physical and political autonomy, need to be
treated by policymakers as a genuine long-term shift since, for all the discrimination in the labour market,
the region’s women show no sign of wishing to go back to their traditional roles.
The main concern of governments has been to change the way the market (including the labour
market) functions and to find ways of promoting productive development and growth. In this context,
unpaid female work has received no consideration other than a bare acknowledgement of its existence as
a factor associated with an instinct for altruism or care. According to the data available, women in the
labour market have mainly gone into care-related activities such as paid domestic work, which employed
an average of 13.5% of women in urban areas and 10.7% in rural areas of the region around 2005
(ECLAC, 2007a), followed by health services, education and, to a lesser extent, productive activities. 24
The traditional sexual division of labour did not concern itself with the divide between the
productive and reproductive spheres, since it assigned clearly differentiated realms, spheres of action and
roles to men and women. The issue of shared responsibility for domestic tasks emerged in particular
historical circumstances and is associated with structural and intersubjective changes (Céspedes, 2002).
This document examines changes in gender relations and demonstrates the importance of
promoting an ethic of shared responsibility for women and men in both the public and the private spheres,
while advocating the design of policies to facilitate the working life of both sexes, improve the terms on
which women participate in the labour market and support an active role for men in unpaid domestic
work. The emphasis on responsibility should not mean a greater burden for women, nor should it be left at
the mercy of individual preferences. The point is to reduce their responsibilities in the private sphere, and
this means that measures are needed from public institutions and policymakers to promote the sharing of
obligations (with more of them being accepted by institutions and by men) and to increase the
responsibility of the public sphere for the enforcement of men’s and women’s rights and obligations.
22
23
24
See Gilligan (1977) for a fuller account of the debate contrasting the ethics of justice and the ethics of care.
See Hierro (1998), Maffia (1994) and Amorós (1985) for a broader overview of this debate.
In Argentina, the health sector provides about 8% of all female employment and 65% of all health workers are
women (Pautassi, 2006). In the productive sector, women make up the bulk of unpaid family workers. In Latin
America, 18% of female workers in the agriculture and fishing sectors were unpaid in 2004, as compared to
5.5% of men (Rico and Marco, 2006).