ELA - Latin American Justice and Gender Think Tank (Equipo Latinoamericano de Justicia y Género)

Work and social security

The occupational sphere is one of the fields that mostly depict discrimination against women in economic matters. In general, production is associated with the set of activities that are necessary for obtaining goods and services for consumption that are paid in the labor market, and with reproduction, the set of socially useful activities that are not monetarily remunerated. Therefore, the work done in a paid job would represent production and the domestic work would entail reproduction.
The job or commonly known as paid work, is a core factor in determining the economic position of people and their possibilities of insertion in modern societies. It is because of remunerated work (and more specifically because of the waged work), that we belong to the public sphere, we achieve a social existence and identity (i.e., a “profession” or a “job”), we are immersed in a network of relations and exchanges, and we are granted rights and duties.
The experience of men and women in the labor market has been historically different deriving in the sexual division of work. Inequalities are shown in various aspects: access to job opportunities, working conditions, remuneration received, occupational skills¸ the work field, the quality of the employment.
From this perspective, ELA is interested in studying –based on case studies- labor market diagnosis and analysis, the presence of “differential opportunities by sex”, this is, the existence of unequal job conditions and possibilities, for equally productive groups, due to the prevalence of factors other than economic ones, so as to promote as from there, positive practices and actions that will change the current discriminatory structures and promote productive spaces where equal opportunities are effectively applied in the labor market.
But we also focus on the reproductive work, which comprises all of those non-remunerated household activities that could be made by someone different to the one who performs it (household member) or that could be purchased if there were a market for it. Likewise, it is differentiated from the personal care tasks performed by each person (feeding, cleaning) and leisure activities that cannot be delegated (going to the theater, walking around). For example → household tasks, care for seniors of the family, children’s education.
As a result of the policies of neoliberal nature implemented in the region since the nineties, responsibilities shifted from the State to the family as women needed “more time” to get the food, the daily income, adapt themselves to the changing demands of their family group marked by unemployment, look for less costly solutions, access health services for their children and seniors of the family group.
This increase in responsibilities in their “domestic burden” is assumed by women with a specific cost over their position in the sexual division of work, as almost the “only” responsible members for the daily supplies of their families. Hence the importance of the promotion of policies that reconcile productive work with family responsibilities.
Social security, as a goal of government policy, seeks to protect the individual from material risks and the typical individual material insecurities (related with diseases, the inability to keep the job or to get a job due to the loss of abilities, the lack of income to face maternity, the raising of children, and/or their education; the need to ensure an income for herself for old age or in case of losing the bread taker). These situations, known as contingencies, should not be solved through public charity or forms of mutualism or cooperation, but they should be resolved by means of collective arrangements. Consequently, social security translates into the state action based on the formal law, guaranteed through social rights and through the technical-administrative intervention of the state apparatus, with differentiated impacts for men and women. The title for the right of access to social security was the category of paid worker, historically a male majority. The members of the worker’s household – spouses and children- had access to social security through a “cascade” effect; this is by extension of the paid worker’s benefits. This means, the protected subjects are the formal workers, as long as they comply with the legal requirements to access the system. It is clearly not an unconditional access system for citizens.
While social security is funded over the basis of salary tax, it leaves informal workers, non-paid farmers, the unemployed and domestic service workers –with a female majority- with no coverage at all. We should add to this, the non-remunerated work, which, undoubtedly, represents most part of women’s productive time.
Just like in employment terms, the reforms applied during the 90’s aggravated the inequalities present in the pension system, the family income regime and the health coverage broadening, in most cases, gender gaps.
Thus, the need to understand that social security is not only translated into an economic matter, but also into a political and cultural one. It is not only related to economic growth but to the definition of the set of life opportunities of the population, to the forms of social integration. In this sense, social security for women is still an unsolved issue and ELA seeks to promote the debate that will include the need and urgency to review the current social security systems in the public powers agenda.