Q&A
Equality for Women
- "The Core of the Problem is Care"
SANTIAGO De CHILE (IPS) - "Women
help to reduce poverty and raise family
incomes, but they pay too high a price
for it, because in every country their
working days are longer than men's,"
said Sonia Montaño, head of the Economic
Commission for Latin America and the
Caribbean's (ECLAC) Division for Gender
Affairs.
Montaño spoke to IPS about issues that
will be addressed at the 11th Regional
Conference on Women in Latin America and
the Caribbean, to be held Jul. 13-16 in
Brasilia.
The previous inter-governmental
conference convened by ECLAC was held in
Quito in 2007. Between 800 and 1,000
women, government officials as well as
civil society representatives are
expected to come to Brasilia, the
Bolivian sociologist said.
Q: What is the aim of the conference?
A: To review progress in the region in
terms of gender equality. At the
meeting, governments will report on the
outcomes of commitments they made,
particularly in the Quito Consensus, a
political agreement adopted three years
ago.
At Brasilia an overall assessment of the
situation of women will not be carried
out; instead the focus will be on
advances in women's economic
empowerment.
Q: What will this focused review show?
A: The governments in fact chose this
issue because its assessment has not
been very positive. Other areas have
shown more progress, like education and
combating violence.
The trend over the last 15 years has
been towards greater participation by
women in the labour market, which is an
important advance. Women go out to work
for two reasons: financial need, and
because they have the education to do
so. Women are better educated now, and
that is also positive.
The problem is that in every country,
fewer women carry out paid work than
men. Although there are various reasons
for this, the core of the problem is
that countries in the region have still
not solved the problem of care.
In other words, women of all age groups,
especially young women of reproductive
age, have not got the state to provide
services, or men to cooperate, and are
losing extended family networks, to
share the burden of caring for children,
the sick and the elderly.
The mothers of young women tend to be
working outside the home as well, and
this creates a vacuum in available care.
Family ties have become more fragile,
there are greater numbers of elderly
people, and the state has not invested
enough in caring services.
This means that women are less mobile;
they look for jobs close to home and
accept more precarious and flexible
work, because women are the only ones
who have to find a balance between their
work and family responsibilities.
The second difficulty is that women
still tend to train in areas similar to
what they have always done: caring. They
are teachers, nurses, domestic
employees. These jobs are lower paid,
and so discrimination is perpetuated.
Women help reduce poverty and raise
family incomes, but they do so at a high
cost to themselves, because their total
working hours, both paid and unpaid, are
longer than men's in every country.
Q: Will ECLAC be presenting a study on
the subject?
A: Yes. The study we are preparing is
titled "¿Qué Estado para qué igualdad?"
(roughly, What kind of state do we need,
for what kind of equality?), and the
question it poses is: what labour
policies have been implemented in the
last decade?
But what we find is that actually,
rather than any employment policies as
such, there have been investment
policies instead.
Countries in general have striven to
attract foreign investment, opening up
employment niches in manufacturing
industries for export, like "temporeras"
(women seasonal workers) in Chile and "maquilas"
(plants assembling goods for export) in
Central America, but undermining the
rights of male and female workers.
In maquilas, women work longer than the
legal eight hours a day, without
contracts, in disgraceful conditions, on
a piece-work basis, under pressure, and
in many cases their human rights are
trampled on, as when pregnant women are
illegally laid off.
Q: 2010 is the 15th anniversary of the
Fourth World Conference on Women, held
in Beijing, and the 10th anniversary of
the setting of the eight Millennium
Development Goals (MDGs - by United
Nations states, to drastically reduce
hunger, poverty, disease and illiteracy,
empower women and protect the
environment by 2015). How well is the
region fulfilling the commitments it
assumed at these two meetings?
A: What we have seen in March in New
York, at (the 54th session of) the
Commission on the Status of Women, is
that compared with other regions, Latin
America has done well, for a number of
reasons.
Over the last seven or eight years there
has been a sizeable reduction in
poverty, as well as democracy and
economic growth. In this context, which
has been more favourable than in the
1980s and 1990s, the region achieved its
educational goals and made progress in
women's participation in employment.
But it has lagged behind on some
extremely serious issues, like maternal
mortality, which I would say is one of
the wounds our region suffers. Countries
that had good indices before the Beijing
conference, such as Uruguay, Chile and
Cuba, continue to do well. But those
with a poor record, although they have
improved somewhat, still have maternal
mortality rates that cannot be excused.
It is inconceivable that, in a world
where people can go to the moon, women
should die in childbirth.
Much progress has also been made in
terms of laws against gender violence
and in women's access to credit, but
less so in political participation. The
regional average (of women lawmakers in
parliaments) is still 17 percent, and at
the current pace it would take another
50 years to reach the target of 40
percent. The present rate of progress is
simply inadequate. |
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