Breathe
By Natalia Calero
The issue of people's care is increasingly being discussed. An example of this is that all three presidential candidates have a campaign proposal in this regard, something that had not happened in previous elections. The importance of making care visible is paramount because it sustains life itself and guarantees the existence of societies.
Care work has historically been performed by women and not considered as economically productive activities. This has had multiple negative consequences, but I will focus on two of them: these tasks have been socially invisibilized and undervalued, and they have been imposed on women without any remuneration.
The fact that care work is undervalued and made invisible means that public resources are not invested to attend to it, but rather it is assumed that families -and specifically women within them- will solve it privately. This implies, among other things, that care is not professionalized and that the people who require it (children, teenagers, the elderly or people with disabilities, among others) do not receive optimal care. Care work should be recognized and valued because it allows the development of a dignified life and establishes the minimum floor for people to exercise their rights. In addition, we must measure the economic value they have; in Mexico, according to INEGI, it was 7.2 trillion pesos in 2022, which is equivalent to 24.3% of the national GDP, more than what the oil industry represents.
The second point is that these tasks have been performed mostly by women without any remuneration. This has been a structural obstacle that perpetuates gender inequality and prevents women from exercising their human rights. When women are socially forced to assume care work, they rest less (which directly affects their physical and mental health), interrupt their studies, abandon or reduce their participation in the labor force - which in turn hinders their economic empowerment, their access to social security rights (housing, health, etc.), and prevents them from having a life project of their own (which violates their right to the free development of their personality).
Care is a right and has been recognized as such by various international and national instruments. The importance of considering it as such lies in the fact that the State must guarantee the conditions to make it a reality. This, in turn, makes its value and importance in society visible and takes the burden of performing it exclusively away from women, which also allows them to fully exercise their other rights.
When recognizing care as a right, the State must implement public policies for its promotion, respect, protection and guarantee. And it is here that we speak of the need for a national care system. As Cynthia Michel, Guillermo Cejudo and Adriana Oseguera point out in their text "What is not a care system?" (Nexos, 2024), not just any program that affects care is a care system. A care system must comprehensively articulate actions for the care of different populations (girls, boys, teenagers, people with disabilities and the elderly, at least), it must be of quality and progressive (i.e., this right must be increasingly guaranteed to a greater extent).
In order to build this policy, and this is especially addressed to all the candidates who have proposed it, at all levels, it is essential that: (a) it must be designed in a participatory manner and with territorial relevance, which means that the particularities of each territory must be taken into account, whether it is rural, urban and the existing services; (b) it must have a gender perspective; (c) it must have an intersectional approach, that is, it must take into consideration the different situations that affect the people who require care and who are cared for; d) that it promotes people's autonomy, i.e., that it is not built on a paternalistic idea, but on the recognition of people's autonomy and independence; and e) that it recognizes the co-responsibility for care, i.e., that it acknowledges that although it is a state obligation, this responsibility is not exclusive to the state, but is shared by other sectors, such as the private sector.
Women have not only made care a reality and made life sustainable, but have also subsidized this work for centuries so that the rest of the population (mostly men) can develop all their skills. Care work must be dignified and recognized because it is thanks to it that life is sustained, and women should not be forced to solve a public problem of such magnitude at the expense of the exercise of their rights. Care must be fully recognized as a human right and the State, together with the other sectors of society, must assume their co-responsibility in this regard.
*NataliaCalero is a specialist in gender equality, inclusion and professional development. Natalia has provided her consulting services to companies in Mexico and the United States to implement actions and programs on gender equality and inclusion policies.
She has more than 18 years of experience in national and international organizations in the areas of human rights, gender equality and inclusion. She worked at UN Women Mexico, where she was in charge of women's leadership and political participation and the elimination of violence against women and girls. She also worked as an Advisor at the Supreme Court of Justice, where she supervised training on equality and elimination of stereotypes, and hosted the program "Tus Derechos" (Your Rights) on the Judicial Channel. Natalia has a law degree from ITAM and two master's degrees: in Strategic Negotiations from Paris-Saclay University and in Public Management from CIDE. She has published several articles on gender equality and is the Director of the Tec de Monterrey Law Program at Campus Santa Fe.
The opinions expressed are the responsibility of the authors and are absolutely independent of the position and editorial line of the company. Opinion 51.
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