Women in Latin America and the Caribbean - Cepal

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3 INTRODUCTION The women of Latin America and the Caribbean are at the centre of one of the greatest cultural shifts in history. In terms of the freedoms that have been won, it may safely be stated today that almost no woman would want to live the life her grandmother did. Yet equality has advanced more slowly than it might have done and, despite the drastic and probably irreversible changes that have occurred in the family, working life and politics, the malaise of women in the region is evidence of the gap between their contribution to society and the recognition they receive for it. Although women now play increasingly important roles in decision-making and are a crucial force in the labour market, they are still overrepresented among the poor and under-represented in politics. The key to this lag and to women’s treatment as a vulnerable minority in public policies lies, to a great extent, in the impossibility of breaking away from the cultural imperative of domestic work and the absence of men from care activities. Almost half of all women over the age of 15 have no income of their own, the number of one-parent households headed by women has increased and only a minority of men are occupied in unpaid work. Although it is thanks to women’s work that the region’s poverty index has decreased by almost 10 percentage points, women continue to earn less than men for equivalent work. They have secured the right to vote and to stand for election, but affirmative action, such as the adoption of quota laws, has been necessary to increase female occupancy of representative positions to 40% in some countries, while the great majority of women remain outside the sphere of decision-making. This document will examine the two themes of the tenth session of the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean, women’s contribution to the economy and social protection —especially as it relates to unpaid labour— and political participation and gender parity in decisionmaking at all levels, in the light of two key concepts: discrimination, as defined in the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, and the sexual division of labour. The Convention has acquired considerable importance in the region, since it has been ratified by all the countries and, in some, such as Argentina, the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela and Brazil, it forms part of the Constitution, together with other human rights instruments. Other countries, such as Costa Rica and Ecuador, incorporate several of the Convention’s principles into the text of their Constitution or use its definition of discrimination against women in legislation, as in Costa Rica’s law 7142 of 1990 on promotion of the social equity of women. Hence, this law establishes that “discrimination against women” shall denote “any distinction, exclusion or restriction made on the basis of sex which has the effect or purpose of impairing or nullifying the recognition, enjoyment or exercise by women, irrespective of their marital status, on a basis of equality of men and women, of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural, civil or any other field”. A similar definition is contained in the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela’s 1990 law on equal opportunities for women. This definition of discrimination is based on the concept of universal, indivisible, interdependent and interrelated human rights. “The international community must treat human rights globally in a fair and equal manner, on the same footing, and with the same emphasis. While the significance of national and regional particularities and various historical, cultural and religious backgrounds must be borne in mind, it is the duty of States, regardless of their political, economic and cultural systems, to promote and protect all human rights and fundamental freedoms.” 2 2 Paragraph 5 of the Vienna Declaration, adopted at the World Conference on Human Rights in 1993.
4 The concept of sexual division of labour contributes to a clearer analysis of social roles clearly differentiated by sex. This division is considered to be a social construction —and hence changeable— which determines the main roles individuals must play in society: women supposedly in charge of social reproduction and men of production work. 3 Above all, however, it sets up hierarchical power relations that force the majority of women to carry out work that has no visibility or social recognition, and this cultural matrix is reproduced in the public sphere where women occupy the most precarious and worstpaid jobs. The vicious cycle of inequality generated by the socially imposed obligation to perform domestic work, particularly care activities, largely explains women’s absence from politics and decisionmaking in general. Throughout this document, two complementary concepts will be used that serve to spotlight some key aspects of inequality: care work and parity. These two ideas are useful in understanding the challenges and tensions standing in the way of women’s progress and in steering a course towards the policies proposed at the end of the document. The individual chapters delve more deeply into both concepts and demonstrate their analytical value. Here, however, it should be noted that parity is a useful concept for analysis because it is not simply a matter of a larger quota of posts being reserved for women, but rather a question of the broadest possible expression of universality. Achieving parity is thus part of a broader process that includes the use of quotas and other tools. Above all, however, it requires the recognition of women as citizens with full rights. More than being a quantitative concept, parity manifests the redistribution of power in three specific spheres: the labour market, decision-making and family life. The debate on parity makes it clear that citizenship is not neutral inasmuch as it is built on male models and access to representation occurs in a sexed environment characterized by the exclusion —not accidental, but structural— of women. The term “unpaid care work” will be limited in this document to unpaid activities of caring for people —sick and healthy alike— to whom the caregiver is bound by family ties and a sense of moral obligation; it includes both direct personal care and the performance of indirect services that contribute to well-being and the development of human capacities. It is thus equivalent to domestic work performed without pay for the benefit of family members. Hence, it excludes unpaid work in family businesses and voluntary work in the community. There is no parallel between this definition and the one used in the system of national accounts. From the point of view of women’s autonomy, care work and looking after others entails a large degree of sacrifice and may even represent a “trap”, personally and politically speaking. Over the years it has been shown that “care” does not have to be equated with self-sacrifice, however. Gilligan (1982) distinguishes between the feminist ethic of autonomy and the female ethic of self-sacrifice, noting that they should not form a basis for the creation of two separate spheres, i.e., the public world of personal autonomy and the private world in which women function. In this debate, gender is an essential category of analysis for an understanding of inequality in fields that have been considered neutral, particularly as regards philosophy, political science and the ideas that inspire democratic principles and governance. In common with many of the concepts set out here, gender has attracted critical analysis and thought, especially in the light of the countries’ experience with the implementation of gender policies. One of the most interesting reflections is that, beyond the triumph of the gender perspective as a compulsory requirement for public policies, its true success lies in the fact that understanding it implies a conceptual leap: recognizing that male and female behaviours depend 3 See Benería (1984) and De Barbieri (1996).
Page 2 and 3: LC/L.2738(CRM.10/3) August 2007 The
Page 4 and 5: 1 FOREWORD The Economic Commission
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Page 27 and 28: 24 Table I.2 LATIN AMERICA (20 COUN
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55 II. WOMEN’S CONTRIBUTION TO TH
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57 more concerned with the ethic of
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59 Box II.1 THE WORK OF CARE IN SOC
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61 of care on women mounts up. This
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63 conditions of employment of work
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65 social security and social benef
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67 disincentive to their recruitmen
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69 seeks to reform the constitution
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71 Box II.4 REGULATION OF EMPLOYMEN
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73 those in rural areas (42.1%), wh
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75 sex and activity (see figure II.
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77 Figure II.4 LATIN AMERICA (SIMPL
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79 Figure II.7 LATIN AMERICA (SIMPL
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81 Box II.6 HAITI. DOMESTIC WORKERS
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83 It is interesting to characteriz
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85 care to the “productive” adu
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87 Box II. 7 (concluded) To sum up,
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89 are also inaccurate, which widen
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91 Some progress has been made sinc
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93 Figure II.15 AVERAGE HOURS SPENT
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95 Country Costa Rica El Salvador G
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97 domestic life is shared between
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99 employee for family reasons. The
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101 In the private sphere, there ha
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103 Table II.4 SEVEN SELECTED CITIE
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105 Box II.12 EXAMPLES OF SOCIAL SE
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107 III. TOWARDS A RESEARCH AND POL
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109 (iii) Contribute to the mainten
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111 Appendix TECHNICAL NOTES The st
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113 Household survey information al
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115 sub-module “home maintenance
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118 _____ (2003), "Políticas para
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120 Carrasco, Cristina (2001), “H
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122 _____ (2003b), “Redes de apoy
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124 Huenchuan, Sandra and José Mig
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126 Montaño, Sonia (2007a), “Emp
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128 Rico, María Nieves (2006), “
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130 _____ (1979), Convention on the
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