Context
Various international crises are hindering efforts to reduce poverty and promote gender equality in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). These crises also pose significant obstacles to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals set forth in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. According to the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), unpaid housework and caregiving responsibilities primarily prevent women from fully participating in the labor market. Women spend 22 to 42 hours per week—nearly three times more than men—on unpaid care work. Even when women take on additional paid employment, it is often insufficient to secure economic autonomy, as many work informally in domestic or caregiving roles.
The region thus faces a dual challenge: the demand for long-term care is rising due to an aging population, while childcare needs remain unmet. Comprehensive, context-specific care policies are needed to ensure fair working conditions and accessible care services.
Objective
Institutional capacities for the design and implementation of care systems and policies in LAC are strengthened.
The project addresses three outputs:
▪ ECLAC provides technical support to LAC governments by offering approaches for designing and implementing care systems and policies with a gender-sensitive, intersectional, and territorial perspective. These approaches provided in, for example, ECLAC field missions for the intersectoral coordination of local and national actors, are compiled in a technical guide.
▪ The promotion of evidence-based knowledge includes exchanging best practices among experts in communities of practice focused on measuring care work and developing gender-sensitive statistics. Based on this, policy briefs are produced and will be made available to LAC governments to support the analysis and improvement of care system designs and policies.
▪ Sharing promising approaches in intra- and inter-regional dialogues for designing and implementing gender-sensitive care systems and policies. Stakeholders from Germany Europe, and the LAC region are strengthening their cooperation as they work toward the XVI. Regional Conference on Women.