Breathe
By Mónica Orozco and Carolina Torres
Today, October 29, is a day of commemoration to remember thatcare are activities, processes and links that generate and sustain the physical and emotional well-being of people, non-human life and the environmenton a daily basis. We are interdependent beings, who are always caring for someone, for ourselves or being cared for by someone else.
Caring for others can be carried out in a paid or unpaid manner, but the reality is that it is done in an unpaid manner, within households and is the responsibility of girls and women. In the research conducted by the Centro de Estudios Espinosa Yglesias (CEEY), we assume that the recognition of the right to care (caring, being cared for and being cared for) is essential for well-being and social mobility.
In Mexico and worldwide, women contribute 76.2% of the total hours dedicated to unpaid work. This social organization of care has negative repercussions and high social and economic costs that are generally invisible in development strategies, plans and government programs. This is so because it is thought that institutional strategies to redistribute care and guarantee the right of all people is too expensive to be assumed by the public budget. Without considering that the lack of a Care System with the co-responsibility of the State, the market, communities, households, women and men has even higher costs that are reflected in remedial expenses for the attention and care of irreversible diseases, violence and its consequences, as well as in the loss of the development of people's capabilities, in the waste of the talent of hundreds of thousands of women who are prevented from entering the labor market, from participating economically, socially and politically. The social organization of care in Mexico fosters and reproduces inequalities and their transmission to new generations, creating conditions of disadvantage at their origin.
One of the most important findings of the research we conducted at CEEY indicates that for women born in the poorest socioeconomic stratum, the probability of escaping poverty when they have care services and social protection coverage in their homes of origin doubles. In other words, the absence of services and protection mechanisms conditions their life achievements and social mobility.
A large group of women caregivers, mothers of children with multiple disabilities, parents who play this role and their children experience more strongly and critically the effects of caregiving without the co-responsibility of other actors in society. With effects on their economic, physical and emotional well-being. Elizabeth Blackburn, Nobel laureate in medicine, received this award for her research on the physiological effects among caregiving mothers, scientifically demonstrating the alterations in the DNA sequence of these women, with impressive decreases in their capacity for cell regeneration and increases in morbidity and risk of early death. Similar types of trauma have been documented in girls and teenagers who, due to lack of dignified care, have been victims of sexual abuse within their own families, whose living conditions are difficult to recover as part of the reparation processes available to victims, exacerbating inequality and reducing the wellbeing that girls and women should be guaranteed.
We must ask ourselves why we have neglected social strategies for the preventive care of children, caregivers and the population in general. Why do we lack a preventive care strategy for a healthy life, when we have reached unsustainable levels of degenerative diseases that can be preventable, such as obesity, diabetes, hypertension and all the complications that derive from them. Why do we prefer that certain groups of the population pay these costs instead of sharing care co-responsibly, through a renewed social contract.
The State is and will continue to be responsible for leading the organization of care and for ensuring that its institutions assume their share, promote and oversee that market and community actors are jointly responsible for care. We need a public dialogue among all actors, including civil society. From CEEY we offer the research we do and the constructive dialogue that contributes to the care strategies of governments, congresses and the judiciary.
Mónica E. Orozco holds a master's degree in statistics from the University of Chicago. She is a founding partner and director of the organization GENDERS and an external research associate at the Centro de Estudios Espinosa Yglesias. She is a specialist in gender and public policy.
Carolina Torres Gómez. Student of Economics at ITESM and Psychology at UNAM. She is currently doing a research stay at the Centro de Estudios Espinosa Yglesias.
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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