Are governments catching up? Work-family policy and inequality in Latin America
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| Autores: | , |
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| Formato: | artículo original |
| Fecha de Publicación: | 2015 |
| Descripción: | The position of women in Latin America has dramatically changed over the past two decades as millions have entered the labour force, often better educated than their male counterparts; family composition has changed; and fertility rates have declined. Yet, these changes have taken place against a backdrop of tremendous socio-economic inequalities and relative inertia in gender relations and care responsibilities. Over the past decade, governments across the region have, albeit slowly, begun to grapple with these changes and their socio-economic implications. This paper examines government policies toward the crucial nexus of work-family reconciliation, focusing on employment-based leaves and early childhood education and care (ECEC) services. We start by discussing the socio-economic context in Latin America and then outline our conceptualization and measurement of parental leaves and care services and the implications of policy design for gender and social equity. We categorize both leave policies and care services according to whether they promote maternalism, paternal coresponsibility, state co-responsibility and/or socio-economic equity. We chart the policy reforms across the region in both maternity, paternity and parental leaves and ECEC services, focusing especially on services for 0–3-year-old children. To illuminate regional trends and best practices, we provide more detailed case studies of policy reforms in Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica and Uruguay. We find that during the past decade care policies entered the agenda of governments much more forcefully than before. Overall, the region is moving in an equity-enhancing direction, particularly in terms of social equity, both in employment-based leaves and in care services. In employment-based leaves, there have been initiatives to include more vulnerable female workers in maternity coverage and also to increase the length of maternity leaves, sometimes explicitly linked to breastfeeding. Where we see less movement, in both framing and in policy adoption, is toward more paternal co-responsibility in the care of children. While Chile and Uruguay have recently instituted shared parental leaves (which is a regional first aside from Cuba), serious efforts to include fathers in the conversation are still in their infancy. In terms of care services, almost all Latin American countries have begun to pay lip service to the need to establish national-level ECEC programmes, especially for more vulnerable families. While the framing tends to focus on children – and is often part of national action plans to address infancy – it has taken place against the backdrop of extant (if minimal) programmes that are mostly full time, in recognition of the needs of working mothers specifically. In virtually all countries, demand far outstrips supply, and the big challenge from the point of view of work-family reconciliation is to extend coverage while maintaining (or extending) full-time hours. This requires a resource commitment that few countries have to date assumed. |
| País: | Kérwá |
| Institución: | Universidad de Costa Rica |
| Repositorio: | Kérwá |
| OAI Identifier: | oai:kerwa.ucr.ac.cr:10669/75235 |
| Acceso en línea: | http://www.unwomen.org/en/digital-library/publications/2015/9/dps-are-governments-catching-up https://hdl.handle.net/10669/75235 |
| Palabra clave: | Education Economic empowerment Employment 323.348 Mujeres |