Abstract

JIMENEZ BRITO, Lourdes Gabriela. Who, how and why care? analysis and proposals to disassemble the social, political and economic care organization in Latin America. La ventana [online]. 2024, vol.7, n.59, pp.112-152.  Epub Apr 12, 2024. ISSN 1405-9436.  https://doi.org/10.32870/lv.v7i59.7744.

The way in which a society manages and provides the necessary care for its survival and reproduction is not gender neutral. This organization works, for the most part, due to the large amount of unpaid work carried out by women in the family sphere, thus affecting their equality, freedom, and dignity. This document identifies, first, the components that make up the current social organization of care in Latin America based on three dimensions of analysis: (a) sociocultural; (b) political and (c) economic. And, secondly, it proposes a selection of mechanisms that could contribute to transforming the components of that organization. The theoretical proposal of “implosion of care regimes” by Juliana Martínez Franzoni (2021) is taken as a starting point to propose a series of strategies that would contribute to dismantling the current social organization of care in the region. The work finds that, in an articulated way, these three analytical categories show the way in which women are held responsible as primary caregivers; certain public policies contribute to crystallizing gender roles that specialize women in care work and relegate them to the domestic world; and finally, it shows that the logic of the labor market responds, mainly, to a male provider model without family responsibilities, which contributes to maintaining and reproducing inequality against women.

Keywords : social organization of care; sexual division of labor; Latin America; gender inequality; feminism.