Policies and care systems in Latin America: an opportunity for the constitutional process in Chile

Last 21 December 2020, GI-ESCR jointly with Chilean organisations Corporación Humanas y la Morada, convened a group of key experts, caregivers, and representatives from different civil society organizations from several countries to share common challenges and proposals to move forward the debate on just care systems in the constitutional process in Chile.

Participants shared experiences and practices in developing advocacy strategies aiming to socially reorganize care systems in different regulatory frameworks at the local and national levels in Latin America and explored advocacy opportunities for feminist organisations and social movements in Chile to promote the recognition of fair and inclusive care systems in the constitutional process.

This first meeting aims to be a steppingstone to collectively build a network of women’s rights organizations and experts to advance gender equality and social and economic rights in the country.

Context

It is an established fact that, across the world, women perform three-quarters of all unpaid care work, or 76.2 per cent of the total of hours provided (ILO, 2018). As it well known, unpaid care work includes domestic work (meal preparation, cleaning, washing clothes, water and fuel collection) as well as direct care of persons (including children, older persons and persons with disabilities, as well as able-bodied adults) carried out in homes and communities (Sepúlveda, 2013). Heavy and unequal care responsibilities are a major barrier to women’s equal enjoyment of human rights and foster conditions of poverty for many already facing precarious socioeconomic conditions.

In response, feminist movements and civil society organizations have mobilised and have made progress demanding measures to socially reorganize care systems. In Latin America some countries and localities, such as Uruguay, Argentina, Colombia, Costa Rica and Mexico City have recognized the social and economic value of care in their legal frameworks. Similarly, the explicit inclusion of unpaid care and domestic work in the Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development offers the opportunity to include transformative care policies within national debates and for feminist and women's movements and other stakeholders to hold governments accountable for the unequal distribution of care.

In Chile, after the historical referendum of 25 October 2020, citizens nationwide voted to replace their civil-military constitution. This has opened a unique opportunity to address human rights demands, such as the social reorganization of care systems as a mean to advance substantive gender equality and progressively realize social and economic rights for all Chileans. Constitutional recognition of inclusive and just care systems would, simultaneously, guarantee the rights of care recipients, as well as the agency, autonomy and well-being of all paid and unpaid caregivers in Chile.