On International Women's Day on Mar. 8, thousands of Chilean women of all ages took to Santiago's central Alameda avenue to demonstrate peacefully for several hours and turn the Chilean capital into a stage for protest and demands for their rights. Some of them were women caregivers accompanied by dependent women. CREDIT: Orlando Milesi / IPS

By Orlando Milesi
SANTIAGO , Mar 20 2024 (IPS)

In Chile, as in the rest of Latin America, the task of caring for people with disabilities, the elderly and children falls to women who, as a result, do not have access to paid jobs or time for themselves.

Unpaid domestic and care work is crucial to the economies of the region, accounting for around 20 percent of gross domestic product (GDP).

Measurements by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) found that in 16 Latin American countries, women spend between 22.1 and 42.8 hours per week on unpaid domestic and care work. Men only spend between 6.7 and 19.8 hours.

Ana Güezmes, director of ECLAC’s Division for Gender Affairs, told IPS that “in most countries women work longer total hours, but with a lower proportion of paid hours.”

“This work, which is fundamental for sustaining life and social well-being, is disproportionately assigned to women. This situation impacts women’s autonomy, economic opportunities, labor and political participation and their access to leisure activities and rest,” Güezmes said at ECLAC headquarters in Santiago.

The situation is far from changing as it is replicated in young women who devote up to 20 percent of their time to unpaid work.

Paloma Olivares, president for Santiago of the women’s organization Yo Cuido, works in her office in the working-class municipality of Estación Central, in the northeast of the Chilean capital. CREDIT: Orlando Milesi / IPS

Women left on their own as caregivers

Paloma Olivares, 43, chairs the Yo Cuido Association in Santiago, Chile, which brings together 120 members, only two of them men."Women caregivers are denied the right to participate on equal terms in society because we are forced to choose between exercising our rights or doing caregiving work. And we cannot choose because it is a job we do for a loved one, for a family member." -- Paloma Olivares

“Women caregivers are denied the right to participate on equal terms in society because we are forced to choose between exercising our rights or doing caregiving work. And we cannot choose because it is a job we do for a loved one, for a family member,” she told IPS.

“We are left in a position of inequality, of absolute vulnerability because you have to devote your life to supporting someone else at the expense of your personal life,” she said.

Olivares stopped working to care for Pascale, her granddaughter, who was born with cerebral palsy and hydrocephalus.

Three days after her birth, a bacterium became lodged in her central nervous system. She was hospitalized for almost a year and became severely dependent.

At the time, she was given a seven percent chance of survival. Today she is eight years old, goes to school and lives an almost normal life thanks to the work of her caregivers.

She is now cared for by her mother Valentina, who had her at the age of 15. Paloma was able to return to paid work, but her daughter abandoned her studies to take care of Pascale.

“When you start being a caregiver, friendships end, because no one can keep up. Even the family drifts away. That’s why most caregiving families are single-parent, the woman is left alone to care because the man can’t keep up with the pace and the emotional and economic burden,” she said.

Olivares participated from Mar. 12 to 14 in a public hearing, digital and in person, on the right to care and its interrelation with other rights, in a collective request of several social organizations and the governments of Chile and other Latin American countries before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR Court), based in San Jose, Costa Rica,

In the request for an opinion from the IACHR Court, “we asked the Court to take a stance on the right to care and how the rights of women in particular have been violated because there are no public policies in this regard. We want the Court to pronounce itself on the right to care and how the States should address it so that this right is guaranteed and so the rights of caregivers are no longer violated,” she explained.

It is expected that the Court’s pronouncement on the matter will come out in April and could establish minimum parameters regarding women caregivers for Chile and other Latin American countries.

Critical situation for women caregivers

Millaray Sáez, 59, told IPS by telephone from the southern Chilean city of Concepción that her son Mario Ignacio, 33, “is no longer the autonomous person he was. Since 2012 he has become a baby.”

She chairs the AML Bío Bío Corporación, an association of women in the Bío Bío region created in 2017 to address the question of female empowerment and today dedicated to the issue of caregivers.

“I have been a caregiver for 30 years for my son who has refractory epilepsy. He became prostrate in 2012 as a result of medical negligence,” said the international trade engineer who has become an expert in public policies on care with a gender perspective.

Sáez said “the situation of women caregivers is very bad, very precarious. There is a single cause, which is the work of caregiving, but the consequences are multidimensional…. from physical deterioration to the lack of legislation to protect against forms of violence, and ranging from the family to what society or the State adds.”

She also pointed to the economic consequences of dependent care.

She cited cases in which caregivers spend over 150 dollars a month on diapers alone for a person who needs them. And she pointed out that the government provides an economic aid stipend of just 33 dollars a month.

Teresa Valdés, head of the Gender and Equity Observatory of the Catholic University of Chile, praises the new registry of caregivers promoted by the Chilean government, but underlines the importance of municipal experiences and initiatives that promote homes and care centers to facilitate the lives of women caregivers. CREDIT: Orlando Milesi / IPS

The magnitude of the problem

It is a pending task to determine the number of women caregivers in Chile.

The government of leftist President Gabriel Boric created a system for caregivers to register and receive a credential that gives them access to public services.

“The credential is the gateway to the Chile Cuida System. With it we seek to make them visible in services and institutions and to reward them for their work by saving them waiting time in daily procedures,” the Minister of Women and Gender Equity, Antonia Orellana, explained to IPS.

So far, there are 85,817 people registered, of whom 74,650 are women, or 87 percent of the total, and 11,167 are men, according to data provided to IPS on Mar. 14 by the Undersecretariat of Social Services of the Ministry of Social Development and Family.

But Chile has 19.5 million inhabitants, and “17.6 percent of the adult population has some degree of disability and, therefore, requires the daily care and support of other people in the home,” the minister said.

That means 3.4 million Chileans depend on a caregiver.

According to Orellana, facing the care scenario projected by the aging of the population will require the collaboration of everyone to “create and sustain an economic and productive system that generates decent work and formal employment, leaving no one behind.”

Other urgent demands by women

Sociologist Teresa Valdés, head of the Gender and Equity Observatory, told IPS that there are many social problems facing Chilean women today, “especially those related to access to health care, social security, unequal pay and access to different goods and services.”

Valdés regretted that the term “women caregivers” is used to refer to the role that women play and the tasks that are culturally assigned to them as a priority.

“We are all caregivers, all women work double shifts. The time-use survey shows that we work an additional 41 hours per week of so-called unpaid reproductive care work,” she said.

According to Valdés, the main advance in this problem is to include it in the debate because these are policies that require a lot of resources and extensive development, since they have to do with the structure of the labor market.

“Part of the proposal should be how to ‘de-genderize’, how care becomes a task of shared responsibility and not only that women have more time to take on the care tasks,” she said.

“When we call women caregivers, we are referring to the group most affected by the conditions of sexual division of labor and family reproduction,” she added.

The expert proposes progressively identifying ways to support women caregivers in order to provide them with available time and take care of their mental health.

She praised the programs promoted by some municipalities to free up time for these women to enjoy leisure and self-care.

“We have to move towards a cultural conception that we are all dependent. Today I depend on you, tomorrow you depend on me. Care is a social task in which I take care of you today so that you can take care of me tomorrow. And that is something that has to start from the earliest childhood,” she argued.

Several people, mainly women, stand in line to check their tickets at Terminal 3 o the José Martí International Airport in Havana. According to the International Organization for Migration, women represent 48 percent of international migrants worldwide, and more and more are migrating on their own. CREDIT: Jorge Luis Baños / IPS

By Luis Brizuela
HAVANA, Aug 25 2023 (IPS)

Emigrating from Cuba was an agonizing decision for Ana Iraida. She left behind family and friends; in her backpack she carried many hopes, but also the fear of facing dangers on the journey to the United States.

“My salary and that of my second job, as an editor, were insufficient. I wanted to prosper and help my parents. Nor did I want to have a child in a country where it is an ordeal to buy everything from disposable diapers to soap, not to mention food,” the 33-year-old philologist who, like the others interviewed for this story, asked to withhold her last name, told IPS.

After selling her apartment in Havana, she left for Nicaragua in December 2022."The journey. I could have been robbed of my money, raped or even murdered. Almost two years ago, when the airports reopened after the COVID pandemic, some young women who lived near my house left and their families never heard from them again." -- Ana Iraida

“Some friends lent me the rest of the money I needed. I reached Mexico by land. I paid 1,800 dollars to be taken to the (U.S.) border. I crossed and turned myself in to the border patrol in Yuma, Arizona, on New Year’s Day,” the young woman said from Houston, Texas, where she now lives.

Estimates put the number of Cubans who emigrated in 2022 at 300,000. Of these, some 250,000 attempted to reach the United States, the country that receives the largest inflow of Cubans and that is only 167 kilometers from Cuba across the Straits of Florida.

The increase in the exodus from this Caribbean island nation of 11 million people is happening against a backdrop of a worsening economic crisis, fueled by COVID, the stiffening of the U.S. embargo, partial dollarization, waning purchasing power of salaries and pensions, shortages of essential products and inflation.

Added to this are failures and delays in the implementation of a set of reforms to modernize the country, approved in 2011, and the unsuccessful implementation of monetary reforms since January 2021.

Local officials here argue that the U.S. Cuban Adjustment Act – known as the “wet foot, dry foot policy” – in force since 1966, encourages the exodus, since it made all Cubans eligible for permanent residency a year and a day after setting foot in U.S. territory.

In the past, the rule benefited all Cubans who set foot on U.S. soil. But since January 2017 it only applies to those who have entered the country legally.

However, the flow of Cubans into the U.S. slowed after President Joe Biden’s administration adopted on Jan. 5 a temporary humanitarian residency permit program known as parole, similar to the one implemented in October 2022 for Venezuelans and previously for people of other nationalities.

As of the end of July, more than 41,000 Cubans had obtained temporary parole, 39,000 of whom had already reached the country, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) reported on Aug. 18.

In addition, after a four-year freeze, on Jan. 4 the U.S. Embassy in Havana resumed processing immigrant visas, a decision that the Cuban government welcomed as a “necessary and correct step” aimed at guaranteeing regular, orderly and safe migration.

Women line up to buy food in Havana. The economic situation, aging population and emigration of young people and professionals are placing additional hurdles in the way of caregivers to obtain food, medicines and other supplies. Image: Jorge Luis Baños / IPS

Risks and impacts

International organizations and human rights groups warn of the risks faced by immigrants en route, especially women, children and the elderly, who are more likely to become victims of abuse, mistreatment, discrimination, extortion, kidnapping and sexual violence by organized crime groups.

“The journey was stressful,” said Ana Iraida. “I could have been robbed of my money, raped or even murdered. Almost two years ago, when the airports reopened after the COVID pandemic, some young women who lived near my house left and their families never heard from them again.”

Other migrants never reach their destinations and remain trapped in transit countries in overcrowded conditions or as victims of violence.

I was also worried “that they would detain me and send me back to Cuba, and that in the end I would have no home to return to, and be in debt,” added Iraida.

According to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), women account for 48 percent of international migrants worldwide and an increasing number are migrating independently, including as heads of households, in search of new opportunities, to join their families or to help relatives in their home countries.

Research indicates that this phenomenon, known as the feminization of migration, generates significant impacts on demographic, physical, economic, cultural and gender indicators in regions and countries.

An elderly woman walks in Havana with the help of her companion. The National Survey on Population Aging showed that about 68 percent of caregivers in Cuba are women, and most of them are over 50 years old. At the same time, more than 57 percent of people over 50 prefer to be cared for by women. CREDIT: Jorge Luis Baños / IPS

Cuba’s January 2013 immigration reform eliminated the requirement for exit permits and letters of invitation for nationals residing on the island, extended from 11 to 24 months the time they could stay abroad without losing residency, and repealed legislation that allowed the confiscation of assets of those who left the country.

Subsequent regulations have also favored increased travel abroad for personal reasons and the possibility of living temporarily or permanently outside the country, opening the doors to a better relationship with the Cuban exile community.

Women make up a majority of those seeking temporary residence abroad, while men are a majority among those who decide to live abroad permanently, revealed the report of the National Migration Survey (Enmig 2016-2017), published by the National Bureau of Statistics and Information (Onei) in January 2019.

The survey found that 59 percent of the men and 45 percent of the women who decided to live temporarily or permanently in another country did so “to improve their economic conditions.”

In the case of women, “getting closer to or visiting family”, “supporting or caring for family members” and “helping their family here” (35 percent) are the most important motives, while they were the main motives for only 21 percent of the men.

Mothers accompany their primary school children during the start of a new school year in Havana. Researchers have called for more attention to be paid to the relationship between the feminization of migration and the burden of care. CREDIT: Jorge Luis Baños / IPS

Focusing on care

Researchers have called for more attention to be paid to the relationship between the feminization of migration and the burden of care.

In the case of Cuba, they say, migration itself often becomes a complementary strategy to face the problems associated with caregiving.

The economic crisis, the aging demographic and the emigration of young people and professionals are placing additional obstacles on caregivers to provide food, buy medicines and manage supplies.

“I moved to Ecuador seven years ago,” Betsy, a 38-year-old teacher, told IPS from the city of Guayaquil. “My two children were born here. My work makes it possible for me to send money, medicines and other products to Cuba to take care of my 80-year-old father, who has senile dementia. Otherwise, it would be very difficult for my older sister to provide adequate care for him.”

In Cuba, 22.3 percent of the population is over 60 years of age, and by 2025 it is estimated that one in four of the island’s residents will be an older adult.

The National Gender Equality Survey, published in 2019, showed that Cuban women spend an average of 14 hours more than men on unpaid work per week, which includes caring for the elderly, chronically ill and dependent persons, as well as helping children and adolescents with their homework.

For its part, the 2017 National Survey of Population Aging (Enep), whose data came out in 2020, showed that about 68 percent of those who provide care are women and most are over 50 years old.

In the case of needing care, more than 57 percent of the population over the age of 50 prefers to receive it from women, according to the study.

“I chose to stay and live in Canada almost two years ago,” said Rocio from Halifax, the capital of the Canadian province of Nova Scotia. “It has been an ordeal, but I have no regrets. It’s a way to help my 11-year-old son and my retired parents, who are taking care of him until we can be together again.”

The 40-year-old translator, who lived in the eastern Cuban city of Holguín, told IPS that “with my salary, my son and I were living on a tight budget. I could hardly help my parents, whose pensions barely covered the household bills, medicines and the few foodstuffs they could afford. I am far away, I suffer from the separation, but every month I can send them money so that they can live more comfortably and eat better.”

Increasingly young and female-dominated emigration is challenging national development plans on a sustainable basis.

“This situation calls for further research and public debate on the present and future impacts of demographic dynamics such as migration and aging as they relate to the social organization of caregiving on the island,” argues Cuban sociologist Elaine Acosta.

In the opinion of Acosta, executive director of “Cuido60, Observatory of aging, care and rights”, there is an urgent need “to accelerate and deepen structural reforms so that migration ceases to be a daily survival strategy and, at the same time, to obtain the necessary resources to implement appropriate and integrated social policies to face the current and future challenges of aging.”

Aida Moreno, founder of the Huamachuco Women's House in the municipality of Renca in northern Santiago, Chile, walks past a large burlap embroidery that represents one of the community soup kitchens organized during the 1973-1990 military dictatorship to provide food for children and adults in this low-income neighborhood. CREDIT: Orlando Milesi / IPS

By Orlando Milesi
SANTIAGO, Aug 14 2023 (IPS)

Women social activists recognize that gender equality is gaining ground in Chile, but maintain that there is still a long way to go to turn into reality the promises to “level the playing field” between women and men, while they highlight the importance of addressing the issue of care work.

“We push feminism for the people, because we are looking at everything, not just women but the whole family, from a gender perspective,” social activist Aída Moreno, a veteran weaver who founded the Huamachuco Women’s House in 1989 in the municipality of Renca, northeast of Santiago, told IPS."In many cases the person has been born with some type of disability or dependency. Their situation is precarious, they are vulnerable. And the State and society punish you for being in care. You are left without health care, unemployed, often without support or family co-responsibility" -- Carolina Cartagena

She argued that gender inequality is still “an open wound in Chile.”

“The issue of care work, for example, is on the table, but nothing has been resolved yet. All we have is hope,” said the 77-year-old campaigner for women’s rights at her organization’s offices.

Carolina Cartagena, 42, is the national secretary of the Asociación Yo Cuido – an association of caregivers – based in the municipality of Villa Alemana, in the Valparaíso region, 131 kilometers north of the Chilean capital.

In an interview with IPS at the association’s headquarters, she said, “There are many women caregivers whose mental health is already overwhelmed. We have extreme cases…and where does that leave the person being cared for, if his or her caregiver is not well mentally, economically and emotionally?” she asked.

The rights of caregivers emerged as a much more visible issue after left-wing President Gabriel Boric included them among the priorities of his social policy and instructed the respective ministries to mainstream the issue.

A celebration held by instructors and participants at the welcome day of the launch of the Cycle of Workshops for caregivers organized by the Asociación Yo Cuido, at its headquarters in the municipality of Villa Alemana, in the Chilean region of Valparaíso. The workshops include dance therapy, home gardens, music therapy and yoga, among other activities. CREDIT: Orlando Milesi / IPS

The first step was to open a registry of caregivers within the Social Registry of Households. Since 2022, the State has been providing accredited caregivers with a credential that for the time being provides them with facilities to speed up procedures in public services.

The Ministry of Social Development and Family estimates that in a first stage some 25,800 people will be registered in the national registry of caregivers. Their estimate is that there are 470,000 informal live-in caregivers, as they define people who live in the same household and take care of family members on an unpaid basis.

There are also 1.12 million Chileans who require a caregiver and a survey by the ministry found that 85 percent of caregivers are women.

Cartagena sees the registry as a step forward but said that “much remains to be done” for caregivers.

The activist believes that “the most urgent thing is a system of care that is ongoing and permanent. In many cases there are government programs, but they last three months and what do you do for the rest of the year?”

Cartagena was referring to a pilot project implemented so far only in a few municipalities such as Villa Alemana, which lasts three months and provides caregivers with medical assistance, therapies and rehabilitation. Her demand is for it to be made permanent and nationwide.

Yo Cuido brings together 800 families from five regions of this long narrow country wedged between the Andes Mountains and the Pacific Ocean: Metropolitan Santiago, in the center; O’Higgins and Valdivia, in the south; and Valparaíso and Coquimbo, in the north.

The association argues that caregiving is a responsibility that should be shared by the government and not just a responsibility of a family or a couple, as the State saves funds thanks to the work of caregivers.

Aida Moreno (R) poses with three other participants in the Huamachuco Women’s House in front of a series of burlap embroideries that will be exhibited at the Cultural Center of the presidential palace of La Moneda on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the military coup led by General Augusto Pinochet on Sept. 11, 1973. CREDIT: Orlando Milesi / IPS

Changing conditions

The overall living conditions of women in this South American country of 19.5 million people have changed over the last two or three generations, with advances in economic participation and educational levels.

The extension of pre- and post-natal leave and an increase in day care centers were followed by stiffer laws against femicides – gender-based killings – and the decriminalization of therapeutic abortion under three circumstances: fetal malformation, danger to the mother’s life or rape.

But this last achievement is threatened today by the far-right Republican Party, which holds a majority in the council that aims to propose the text of a new constitution that voters will approve or reject in a plebiscite in December.

Sociologist Teresa Valdés, of the Gender and Equity Observatory, told IPS that “gender gaps remain, as do conditions of discrimination, mainly related to machismo (sexism), harassment and the difficulty of getting ahead in the workplace.”

She added that the experience of inequality varies greatly, depending on where the women live.

In Chile, 47.7 percent of households are headed by women, according to the government’s 2022 National Socioeconomic Characterization Survey, and 58.7 percent of these live in poverty.

The latest National Time Use Survey, from 2015, showed that the hours dedicated to unpaid work in a typical day average 2.74 for Chilean men and 5.89 for Chilean women.

Valdes also warned about the high rates of violence against women in the country, despite policies to promote gender parity.

“The latest prevalence survey says that two out of five women have experienced situations of intimate partner violence and these are higher numbers than before. We do not know if this is because there are more cases than before or because there is more sensitivity and recognition of the violence,” said the sociologist.

And she complained that there is a lack of capacity in public programs to attend to these victims in the healthcare or judicial systems.

“That is a huge debt owed to women, and we continue to see a significant number of femicides per year,” Valdes said. In 2022 there were 43 gender-based murders of women in the country, according to the Ministry of Women and Gender Equity.

Carolina Cartagena, national secretary of the Asociación Yo Cuido in Chile, wears the purple sweatshirt that identifies the members of this movement of women caregivers. The central headquarters, which carries the same color, is where they hold meetings, workshops and sessions for training, education and forging ties among caregivers. CREDIT: Orlando Milesi / IPS

Huamachuco, a pillar of training and community services

The Huamachuco Women’s House is a center for training and combating poverty and discrimination against women.

It began in 1989 as a soup kitchen for children and families. Then it became a center for training, especially traditional embroidery on burlap made from jute or hemp, whose handcrafted works are about to be exhibited in the presidential palace of La Moneda. Later it became a place to learn trades such as hairdressing or sewing.

It currently offers a wide range of workshops and courses including baking, jewelry making, therapeutic massage and a digital skills course provided by Mujeres Emplea, a United Nations employment training program led by UN Women.

But above all, it is a place of support for women who suffer various types of violence and who feel protected by their peers.

Moreno said that women used to work the same amount or more than today and their work was not recognized. She added that now their work is more highly valued, but still “very insufficiently.”

“There are many gaps we have in terms of men who go out to work and come back home just to rest. He never lays awake at night thinking about what he is going to cook the next day, which is double work when there is no money,” she said.

“Today we are placing value on women’s work. I don’t say price, although I could say it because if a man on his own had to pay for laundry services, food, etc., he wouldn’t be able to afford it with what he earns,” she said.

Moreno is also concerned about children and stressed that “preventing violence against them is a job that has no price.”

The Huamachuco Women’s House is now promoting a very important project: getting kids who have dropped out of basic education back into school, with follow-up.

“We work with children and families and aim to reinsert them in another school. We look for schools and provide them with support. In general, they are critical cases, of parents who are in prison or similar circumstances,” she said.

Two young nursery school teachers pose for a photo in a room of the day care center that serves 30 children a day in the low-income neighborhood of Huamachuco. The day care center is an initiative of local residents themselves and was awarded a prize by UN Women, which provided all the equipment needed to open a similar center in the same municipality of Renca, part of the Metropolitan Region of Santiago de Chile. CREDIT: Orlando Milesi / IPS

Women caregivers plead for time off

“Recognition of caregiving is urgently needed because we women become poorer by staying at home and not being able to go out and work to improve our quality of life,” Moreno said.

It is also a central demand of the Asociación Yo Cuido.

“My daughter, age five, has cerebral palsy,” Cartagena said. “There are many moms with children on the autism spectrum. There are caregivers caring for two or three people. The problem is cross-cutting and includes Alzheimer’s. There are women who take care of their 90-year-old mothers.”

And she regretted that there is no legislation to protect caregivers.

“We are fighting for a support and care system that is being promoted with participatory dialogues in different municipalities to learn about the needs of caregivers,” she said.

“Never again alone” is the motto of the association, created in 2018, which defines itself as national, non-profit, social action and non-welfare oriented in character.

“In many cases the person has been born with some type of disability or dependency. Their situation is precarious, they are vulnerable. And the State and society punish you for being in care. You are left without health care, unemployed, often without support or family co-responsibility,” said Cartagena.

She added that many caregivers suffer from psychological and emotional deterioration, as well as poverty.

“A main objective of our association is to ensure the mental health rights of caregivers,” she underlined.

She pointed out that caregiving work involves mainly women: 90 percent of the members of the association are women.

“We want centers to be opened where they can drop off the person they take care of, so they can have just a few hours off a day,” she said.

This is the role of the day care center in Huamachuco that serves women who suffer physical, psychological or economic violence.

“Most of the mothers in these projects are single women who have no networks. And they have to go out to work leaving their children with other people,” said Moreno.

UN Women rewarded the work of this day care center by donating another similar one, fully equipped, to be installed in another part of Renca.

The elderly activist said with pride that “the fruits are there for us to see because there are young people who are now professionals and who say well…if it hadn’t been for this day care center I don’t know what would have become of us.”

While cooking on one side of her wooden tin-roofed house, Mercedes Marcahuachi describes her long day's work to meet the needs of her household and of the soup kitchen where she serves 150 daily rations at the low price of 80 cents of a dollar, in one of the settlements of Ventanilla, a "dormitory town" of Lima, the Peruvian capital. CREDIT: Mariela Jara / IPS

By Mariela Jara
CALLAO, Peru, Jul 3 2023 (IPS)

At five in the morning, when fog covers the streets and the cold pinches hard, Mercedes Marcahuachi is already on her feet ready to go to work in Pachacútec, the most populated area of the municipality of Ventanilla, in the province of Callao, known for being home to Peru’s largest seaport.

“If I don’t get up that early, I don’t have enough time to get everything done,” the 55-year-old woman tells IPS as she shows us the area of her home where she runs a soup kitchen that she opened in 2020 to help feed her community during the COVID pandemic and that she continues to run due to the stiffening of the country’s economic crisis."When we came here in 2000 there was no water or sewage, life was very difficult. My children were young, my women neighbors and I helped each other to get ahead. Now we are doing better luckily, but I can't use the transportation to get to the market; I can't afford the ticket, so I save by walking and on the way back I take the bus because I can't carry everything, it's too heavy." -- Julia Quispe

Emerging as a special low-income housing project in the late 1980s, it was not until 2000 that the population of Pachacútec began to explode when around 7,000 families in extreme poverty who had occupied privately-owned land on the south side of Lima were transferred here by the then government of Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000).

The impoverished neighborhood is mainly inhabited by people from other parts of the country who have come to the capital seeking opportunities. Covering 531 hectares of sandy land, it is home to some 180,000 people, about half of the more than 390,000 people in the district of Ventanilla, and 15 percent of the population of Callao, estimated at 1.2 million in 2022.

Marcahuachi arrived here at the age of 22 with the dream of a roof of her own. She had left her family home in Yurimaguas, in the Amazon rainforest region of Loreto, to work and become independent. And she hasn’t stopped working since.

She now has her own home, made of wood, and every piece of wall, ceiling and floor is the result of her hard work. She has two rooms for herself and her 18-year-old son, a bathroom, a living room and a kitchen.

“I’m a single mother, I’ve worked hard to achieve what we have. Now I would like to be able to save up so that my son can apply to the police force, he can have a job and with that we will make ends meet,” she says.

Marcahuachi worked for years as a saleswoman in a clothing store in downtown Lima, adjacent to Callao, and then in Ventanilla until she retired. Three years ago, she created the Emmanuel Soup Kitchen, for which the Ministry of Development and Social Inclusion provides her with non-perishable food.

Pachacútec, a poor settlement in the port municipality of Ventanilla, has 180,000 inhabitants from different regions of the country and districts of Lima, the Peruvian capital. The conditions of poverty and precariousness increase caregiving work, typically associated with women due to gender stereotypes. CREDIT: Mariela Jara / IPS

The community soup kitchen operates at one end of the courtyard that surrounds her house and offers 150 daily food rations at the subsidized price of three soles (80 cents of a dollar), which she uses to buy vegetables, meat and other products used in the meals.

Marcahuachi feels good that she can help the poorest families in her community. “I don’t earn a penny from what I do, but I am happy to support my people,” she says.

Her daily routine includes running her own home as well as ensuring the 150 daily food rations in the Emmanuel settlement where she lives, one of 143 neighborhoods in Pachacútec.

Various studies, including the World Bank’s “Rising Strong: Peru Poverty and Equity Assessment”, have found that poverty in Peru is mostly urban, contrary to most Latin American countries, a trend that began in 2013 and was accentuated by the pandemic.

By 2022, although the national economy had rallied, the quality of employment and household income had declined.

Mercedes Marcahuachi is a resident of Pachacútec, a large area in the province of Callao on Peru’s central coast characterized by poverty and inequality. During the pandemic she set up a soup kitchen in her home, to feed the poorest local residents in her neighborhood, which is called Emmanuel. CREDIT: Mariela Jara / IPS

In Pachacútec, in the extreme north of Callao, the hardship is felt on a daily basis.

Only the two main streets are paved, while the countless steep lanes lined with homes are stony or sandy. Cleaning is constant, as dust seeps through the cracks in the wooden walls and corrugated tin-sheet roofs.

In addition, food and other basic goods stores are far away, so it is necessary to take public transportation there and back, which makes daily life more expensive and complicated.

But these are unavoidable responsibilities for women, who because of their stereotypical gender roles are in charge of care work: cleaning, washing, grocery shopping, cooking, and caring for children and adults with disabilities or the elderly.

This is the case of Julia Quispe, who at the age of 72 is responsible for a number of tasks, such as cooking every day for her family, which includes her husband, her daughter who works, and her four grandchildren who go to school.

Julia Quispe, 72, continues to care for and feed her family, including making the long trip to the market to shop and feed her husband, daughter and grandchildren. She does so at the cost of her own poor health. But this resident of Pachacútec, a poor area near Lima, the Peruvian capital, responds that she has “never worked”, when asked. CREDIT: Mariela Jara / IPS

She tells IPS that she has uterine prolapse, that she is not feeling well, but that she has stopped going to the hospital because for one reason or another they don’t actually provide her with the solution she needs.

Despite her health problems, she does the shopping every day at the market, as well as the cooking and cleaning, and she takes care of her grandchildren and her husband, who because of a fall, suffers from a back injury that makes it difficult for him to move around.

“When we came here in 2000 there was no water or sewage, life was very difficult,” she says. “My children were young, my women neighbors and I helped each other to get ahead. Now we are doing better luckily, but I can’t use the transportation to get to the market; I can’t afford the ticket, so I save by walking and on the way back I take the bus because I can’t carry everything, it’s too heavy.”

But when it comes to talking about herself, Quispe says she never worked, that she has only dedicated herself to her home, replicating the view of a large part of society that does not value the role of women in the family: feeding, cleaning the house, raising children and grandchildren, providing a healthy environment, which includes tasks to improve the neighborhood for the entire community.

Moreover, in conditions of poverty and precariousness, such as those of Pachacútec, these tasks are a strenuous responsibility at the expense of their own well-being.

The steep streets of Pachacútec are sandy or stony, which means there is constant dust in the homes, and women have to spend more hours cleaning in this densely populated settlement of Ventanilla, a coastal municipality neighboring Lima. CREDIT: Mariela Jara / IPS

Recognizing women’s care work

“Poor urban women have come from other regions and have invested much of their time and work in building their own homes, caring for their children and weaving community, a sense of neighborhood. They have less access to education, they earn low wages and have no social coverage or breaks, so they are also time poor,” Rosa Guillén, a sociologist with the non-governmental Gender and Economics Group, tells IPS.

“For years, they have taken care of their families, their communities, they do productive work, but it is a very slow and difficult process for them to pull out of poverty because of   inequalities associated with their gender,” she says.

She adds that “even so, they plan their families, they invest the little they earn in educating their children, fixing up their homes, buying sheets and mattresses; they are always thinking about saving up money for the children to study during school vacations.”

From the focus of the approach of feminist economics, she argues that it is necessary for governments to value the importance of the work involved in caregiving, in taking care of people, families, communities and the environment for the progress of society and to face climate change, investing in education, health, good jobs and real possibilities for retirement.

“Living here makes you feel like crying but what would that get me, I just have to get over it,” Ormecinda Mestanza, a resident of Pachacútec since 2004, tells IPS. She commutes daily to the Peruvian capital of Lima to work and earn a living, in trips that take between two and three hours. CREDIT: Mariela Jara / IPS

Ormecinda Mestanza, 57, has lived in Pachacútec for nine years. She bought the land she lives on but does not have the title deed; a constant source of worry, because besides having to work every day just to get by, she has to fit in the time to follow up on the paperwork to keep her property.

“It makes you want to cry, but I have to get over it, because this little that you see is all I have and therefore is the most precious thing to me,” she tells IPS inside her wooden shack with a corrugated tin roof.

Everything is clean and tidy, but she knows that this won’t last long because of the amount of dust that will soon cover her floor and her belongings, which she will just have to clean over again.

She works in Lima, as a cleaner in a home and as a kitchen helper in a restaurant, on alternate days. She gets to her jobs by taking two or three public transportation buses and subway trains, and it takes her two to three hours to get there, depending on the traffic.

“I get up at five in the morning to get ready and have breakfast and I get to work late and they scold me. ‘Why do you come so far to work?’ they ask me, but it’s because the daily pay in Pachacútec is very low, 30 or 40 soles (10 to 12 dollars a day) and that’s not enough for me,” she says.

Wood and corrugated tin roofing are the materials used in most of the houses in Pachacútec, an area in the north of the province of Callao, adjacent to the capital of Lima, as is the case of the home of Ormecinda Mestanza, who constantly worries that when it rains her house will be flooded by leaks in her roof. CREDIT: Mariela Jara / IPS

She managed to buy the land with the help of relatives. After working for a family as a domestic for 30 years, her employers moved abroad and she discovered that they had lied to her for decades, claiming to be making the payments towards her retirement pension. “I never thought I would get to this age in these conditions, but I don’t want to bother my son, who has his own worries,” she says.

According to official figures, in Peru, a country of 33 million inhabitants, 70 percent of people living in poverty were in urban areas in 2022.

And among the parts of the country with a poverty rate above 40 percent is Callao, a small, densely populated territory that is a province but has a special legal status on the central coast, bordered to the north and east by Lima, of which it forms part of its periphery.

The municipality of Ventanilla is known as a “dormitory town” because a large part of the population works in Lima or in the provincial capital, also called Callao. Because of the distance to their jobs, residents spend up to five or six hours a day commuting to and from work, so they basically only sleep in their homes on workdays, and very few hours at that.

Guillén says it is necessary to bring visibility to the workload of women and the fact that it is not valued, especially in poor outlying urban areas like Callao.

“We need a long-term policy immediately that guarantees equal education for girls and boys, and gives a boost to vocations, without gender distinctions, that are typically associated with women because they are focused on care,” says the expert.

She adds that if more equality is achieved, democracy and progress will be bolstered. “This way we will be able to take better care of ourselves as families, as society and as nature, which is our big house,” she remarks.

A caregiver assists her elderly employer on a residential street in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Credit: Fabiana Frayssinet/IPS

By Fabiana Frayssinet
BUENOS AIRES, May 19 2015 (IPS)

As in the rest of the world, the care of children, the elderly and the disabled in Latin America has traditionally fallen to women, who add it to their numerous domestic and workplace tasks. A debate is now emerging in the region on the public policies that governments should adopt to give them a hand, while also helping their countries grow.

The challenges women face are reflected by the life of body therapist Alicia, from Argentina, who preferred not to give her last name. After raising three children and deciding to concentrate on her long-postponed dream of becoming a writer, she now finds herself caring for her nearly 99-year-old mother.

The elderly woman is in good health for her age, with almost no cognitive or motor difficulties. But time is implacable, and Alicia is starting to wonder how she will be able to afford a full-time nurse or caregiver.“In Latin America we’re facing what has been called the caregiving crisis. As life expectancy has improved, the population is ageing, which means there are more people in need of care.” -- Gimena de León

“I can see things changing in my mother’s condition. She can still get around pretty much on her own – she can take a bath, she moves around, but it’s getting harder and harder for her. And she’s becoming more and more forgetful,” said Alicia, who up to now has managed to juggle her work and job-related travelling thanks to the help of a cousin and a woman she pays as back-up support.

“But soon I’ll have to find another way to manage,” she added. “I won’t be able to leave her alone, like I do now, for a few hours. I have no idea how I’ll handle this. Time is running out and soon I’ll have to figure something out, if I want to be able to continue with my own life.”

According to Argentina’s national statistics and census institute, INEC, women dedicate twice as much time as men to caregiving: 6.4 hours a day compared to 3.4 hours. Among women who work outside the home, the average is 5.8 hours.

But given the new demographic makeup of the region, the situation could get worse, according to Gimena de León, a United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Inclusive Development analyst.

“In Latin America we’re facing what has been called the caregiving crisis,” she told IPS. “As life expectancy has improved, the population is ageing, which means there are more people in need of care.”
“At the same time the proportion of the population able to provide care has shrunk, basically because of the massive influx of women in the labour market. That’s where the bottleneck occurs, between the caregiving needs presented by the current population structure and this drop in family caregiving capacity,” she added.

The International Labour Organisation (ILO) reports that 53 percent of working-age women in the region are in the labour market, and 70 percent of women between the ages of 20 and 40.

It also estimates that in 2050 the elderly will make up nearly one-fourth of the population of Latin America, due to an ageing process that is a new demographic phenomenon in this region of 600 million people.

Changes that according to René Mauricio Valdés, the UNDP resident representative in Argentina, “leave a kind of empty space,” which is more visible in the political agenda because up to now it was taken for granted that families – and women in particular – were in charge of caregiving.

The UNDP and organisations like the ILO and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) are promoting a regional debate on the need for governments to design public policies aimed at achieving greater gender equality.

According to the UNDP, caregiving is the range of activities and relationships aimed at meeting the physical and emotional requirements of the segments of the population who are not self-sufficient – children, dependent older adults and people with disabilities.

In the region, the greatest progress has been made in Costa Rica, especially with respect to the care of children, and in Uruguay, where a “national caregiving system” has begun to be built for children between the ages of 0 and 3, people with disabilities and the elderly, with the additional aim of improving the working conditions of paid caregivers.

Other countries like Chile and Ecuador have also made progress, but with more piecemeal measures.

In Argentina the national programme of home-based care providers offers training to paid caregivers and provides home-based care services to poor families, through the public health system. But the waiting lists are long.

“The current policies don’t suffice to ease the burden of caregiving for families, and for women in particular, who are the ones doing the caregiving work to a much greater extent than men,” said De León.

“The distribution of time and resources is clearly unfair to women, and the state has to take a hand in this,” she said.

Solutions should emerge according to the specific characteristics of each country. Measures that are called for include longer maternity and paternity leave, more caregiving services for the elderly, more daycare centres for small children, flexibility to allow people to work from home, and more flexible work schedules.

But caregiving is still a relatively new issue in terms of public debate, and has been largely invisible for decision-makers, according to Fabián Repetto of the Argentine Centre for the Implementation of Public Policies Promoting Equity and Growth.

“The different things that would fit under the umbrella of a policy on caregiving were never given priority in the political sphere,” she told IPS.

Repetto believes the issue will begin to draw the interest of the political leadership “when it becomes more visible.”

The “economic argument” of those promoting this debate, the UNDP explains, is “the need to incorporate the female workforce in order to improve the productivity of countries and give households a better chance to pull out of poverty.”

In addition, it is necessary to improve “the human capital” of children, “whose educational levels will be strengthened with comprehensive care policies in stimulating settings.”

“What does that mean? That those children who receive early childhood development today, and who we give a boost with a caregiving policy, will be much more productive. And being much more productive as a society makes the country grow, and makes it possible to have better policies for older adults as well,” Repetto said.

Alicia prefers a “human” rather than economic argument.

“The idea is to respect the life of an elderly person, which sometimes for different reasons is hard to maintain. Respect for the dignity of the other, so they can live the best they can up to the last moment. For them to be cared for, and that doesn’t just mean changing their diapers, but that they are cared for as a human being.”

Edited by Estrella Gutiérrez/Translated by Stephanie Wildes

Women buying food at a farmers market in the Playa neighbourhood of Havana. More than 98 percent of the unpaid domestic work and family care in Cuban homes falls to women. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

By Patricia Grogg
HAVANA, Aug 20 2014 (IPS)

Hortensia Ramírez feels like she needs more hands to care for her 78-year-old mother, who suffers from arteriosclerosis, do the housework, and make homemade baked goods which she sells to support her family.

She starts her day at 6:00 AM, putting the sheets that her mother wet during the nighttime to soak, before preparing the dough for the pastries and making lunch for her two sons; one works in computers and the other is in secondary school.

“Two years ago I quit my job as a nurse because my mother couldn’t be alone, and although I have a brother who helps with the expenses, I provide the day-to-day care,” the 57-year-old, who separated from her second partner shortly before her mother started to need round-the-clock care, told IPS.

“Since then my life has been reduced to taking care of her, but it’s more and more complicated to put food on the table and to get her medication – and don’t even mention disposable diapers on my limited income…Well, let’s just say I end my day exhausted.”

Like the majority of middle-aged Cuban women, Ramírez feels the burden of domestic responsibilities and family care, exacerbated by economic hardship after more than 20 years of crisis in this socialist country.

The burden of caretaking traditionally falls to women, which sustains gender inequalities and makes women vulnerable to the reforms undertaken by the government of Raúl Castro since 2008, aimed at boosting productivity and the efficiency of the economy, but without parallel wage hikes.

The reduction of the number of boarding schools where students combine learning with agricultural work in rural areas, the closure of workplace cafeterias, and cutbacks in the budget for social assistance have left families on their own in areas where they used to receive support from the state, and which affect, above all, the female half of the population of 11.2 million.

“The state is passing part of the burden of caregiving and healthcare and education to families, but economic development should take into account the contributions made by families,” economist Teresa Lara told IPS.

If no one cooks, takes care of the collective hygiene, helps children with homework or cares for older adults and the ill, then the workforce won’t grow, the expert said.

But these tasks, which almost always fall to women, remain invisible and unpaid.

Cuban women dedicate 71 percent of their working hours to unpaid domestic work, according to the only Time Use Survey published until now, carried out in 2002 by the National Office of Statistics and Information (ONEI).

The study, whose results remain valid today according to experts, found that for every 100 hours of work by men, women worked 120, many of them multitasking – cooking, cleaning, washing and caring for children.

Based on those tendencies, Lara estimates that unremunerated domestic work and caregiving would be equivalent to 20 percent of GDP – a larger proportion than manufacturing.

And that percentage could be even higher today given the complexity of daily life in Cuba, the economist said.

Without laundries, dry cleaning services, industries that produce precooked foods or other services that ease domestic tasks at affordable prices, Cuban families have to redouble their efforts to meet household needs.

To that is added the rundown conditions of homes for the elderly and public daycare centres and the reduction of the state budget for social assistance, from 656 million dollars in 2008 to 262 million in 2013, according to the national statistics office (ONEI).

Women often end up stuck in lower level jobs, or dropping out of the job market altogether, because of the burden of caretaking for children, the ill or the elderly, on top of the other household duties.

Many women find it hard to cope financially with the burden of caregiving, in a country where the average monthly salary is 20 dollars a month while the minimum amount that a family needs is three times that, even with subsidised prices for some food items and services.

ONEI statistics show that the female unemployment rate rose from two percent in 2008 to 3.5 percent in 2013, parallel to the drastic pruning of the government payroll, which could soon bring the number of people left without a job up to one million.

Although the number of areas where private enterprise or self-employment is permitted was expanded, they do not guarantee social security coverage. Nor do they tap into the expertise accumulated by women, who make up over 65 percent of the professional and technical workforce in this Caribbean island nation.

Sociologist Magela Romero says that burdening women with the social role of caretaker buttresses the unequal power relations between the genders, with economic, emotional, psychological and sexual consequences for women.

A qualitative study of 80 women from Havana carried out by the university professor in 2010, which IPS saw, concluded that a number of those interviewed were caught up in an endless cycle of caregiving: after they completed their studies they spent the rest of their lives raising children and taking care of parents, parents-in-law, grandparents, grandchildren, spouses and other family members.

This situation is especially complex in a country with an aging demographic, where 18 percent of the population is over 60 and 40 percent of households include someone over that age.

Adriana Díaz, an accountant, was only able to work in her profession for less than a decade.

“First my kids were born, and I raised them. Then I got divorced and I went back to work for four years, which were the best years of my life. But when my mother fell seriously ill, I quit again,” the 54-year-old told IPS.

Nearly nine years taking care of her mother round the clock left Díaz with a bad back and cardiovascular problems. Besides the fact that she is entirely dependent on her children, who moved abroad.

Social researcher María del Carmen Zabala says the gender gaps in employment that are a by-product of the fact that the responsibility for caregiving falls almost exclusively on women require policies that specifically address women, in line with the changes currently underway in the country.

Citing the rise in the proportion of female-headed households to 45 percent, according to the 2012 Census on Population and Housing, Zabala said specific policies targeting these families are needed, because they are especially vulnerable.

Edited by Estrella Gutiérrez/Translated by Stephanie Wildes