The route to try to unfreeze the reform that creates the national care system

Feminist movements know about resistance and strategy. If it is not for a constitutional reform, it can be with a general law; if for now there is no budget, the following year they will insist. But you can’t continue to pause the creation of the national care systemwhich would help the employability of women and people could have options to give and receive care.

“There is an analysis that tells us that constitutional reform would not be the only way. We could directly make a general care law based on the right to work, health and many other rights that we have in Mexico,” says feminist senator Patricia Mercado (Citizen Movement).

In 2020, the Chamber of Deputies approved a reform to the article 4 of the Constitution to recognize the right to care. The modification indicates that this will be guaranteed by the State and establishes the co-responsibility of men, families, the community, the market and the State itself, not only of women. And in article 73, Congress is ordered to issue the general law of the national care system.

It was the LXIV Legislature, the first where there was gender parity, and a group of feminist deputies from different parties made an effort to get their benches to vote in favor of the constitutional reform. But the inertia of his work stopped when the bill reached the Senate. The weight of the priority issues for the federal Executive and for a good part of the Legislature slowed him down.

So, a group now of feminist and allied senators presented the initiative for a general law, to get ahead of it and not wait for the constitutional reform to come out first and then comply with what is ordered there: create that general law. “That can be a way out, if there are no conditions for a constitutional reform, let’s go this way,” explains Patricia Mercado.

Legislative Strategy and Obstacles

A few weeks ago, Patricia Mercado called a press conference to talk about it, where civil society organizations that have promoted the issue would participate. But the debate on extending the term of the national guard in public security work, he won the media spotlight, so the legislator had to postpone the meeting with the media.

The minutes of San Lázaro are in the Committee on Constitutional Points of the Senate. But there was also the initiative of the National Guard. there are others constitutional reforms “That the federal government is interested in and since it does not have a qualified majority, the agreements take a long time and everything else is pending. As long as what interests the Executive does not come out, we are not going to advance in other matters”.

Instead, the senators’ initiative to create the General Law of the National Care System it is in the Commission for Gender Equality, where there is an agreement. “It would be turning the constitutional reform around, but I have my doubts,” says Patricia Mercado. It seems that there is a majority agreement in the parliamentary groups for this law, she comments, “but I am not so sure that all the parties agree to create it without changing article 73 of the Constitution.”

In the federal government, a consensus has also been reached “more or less”, as the senator has been informed. “The Government Report speaks for the first time of care services, the Executive has had dialogues with social organizations” and the National Institute for Women (Inmujeres) carried out a study on the need for care in the pandemic.

The next challenge you face is budget for the implementation of public policies. But “we don’t want the issue of money to be an obstacle either. The first thing is to have the law and then win battles to finance care”.

The battle for reform will continue

Until now, she says somewhat despondently, “it’s all a bit of what we’ve said in recent months, that we’re still working on it.” But the signs from the federal government in care policies are not good, he regrets.

“He did not close the full-time schools, but the budget priority is for the program The School is Ours. We do not know what happens with the Support Program for the Welfare of Girls and Boys, Children of Working Mothers, if these women are going to work, and are contracting care services”.

But, the memory of resistance comes back to her. “Until now, no one has told us ‘this is where we’re going,’ so we’ll keep fighting, all the legislators from all the parliamentary groups”.

Not even the lack of budget will lead them to give up, he warns. The minute of the constitutional reform indicates that no organic structurenor will “additional financial commitments” be assumed.

Patricia Mercado is clear that for the reform to not be simply “a simulation, rights require public resources. This government places that reserve on all laws, that there is no financing. This is how it has been and we accept it as long as we generate a right or approve one, in this case it is better to have the law as it is or not to have it”.

But the budget is decided every year, and there they can fight because economic resources are labeled. It would not be additional money, but that in a game an amount is destined exclusively for care services. “In that sense, I say that we would pull it off.”