Carolina Gómez Mena and Lilian Hernandez Osorio
La Jornada newspaper
Thursday, August 14, 2025, p. 8
The countries of the region suffer from a “care crisis”, which will be exacerbated in the next 25 years due to population aging. It is estimated that by 2050, the number of people aged 65 and more will double and reach 18.9 percent, that is, 138 million, the executive secretary of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), José Manuel Salazar Xirinachs.
In the initial session of the 16 Regional Conference on Women of Latin America and the Caribbean, he warned that although the number of children is decreasing, aging processes with high feminization have begun, so there will be “growing care needs of older adults without having yet resolved child care.”
Salazar Xirinachs stressed that the time dedicated to unpaid and care is totally inequitable between men and women. While they allocate two thirds of their time to those activities, men barely use a third. He added that the unpaid worker charging that women perform exceeds, until the end of their life (beyond the age of 80), the 20 hours per week.
María Noel Vaeza, Regional Director of UN Women, emphasized that the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean grow “on the shoulders of women”, because the economic value of unpaid work they carry out, especially domestic and care work, represent 25 percent of the gross domestic product of each nation on average.
If there were a more equitable distribution of care between men and women, the latter’s access to the labor market could reach 63 percent in the coming years. He stressed that the investment in the issues is almost insignificant in relation to what women contribute, and called the governments of the region to allocate a budget to finance care systems that generate formal employment and are the engine of the economy.
Laura Pautassi, principal researcher of the National Council of Scientific and Technical Research in Argentina, said that “reaffirm the right to take care of, be careful and self -care in equality and non -discrimination strengthens democracy in times of deep global crisis,” especially before the progress of conservative governments that deny structural inequalities and human rights.
Paula Narváez Ojeda, permanent representative of Chile before the UN, said that the debate on care cannot be limited to women, but “must be in all global agendas: economic, climate, digital, security and more, because if we do not integrate it transversely, we will continue to administer crisis instead of building sustainable solutions,” he said.
