Care work in Mexico, who does it and who can pay for it?

In our country, as in most of the world, the State has not recognized care as a right and the market has taken advantage of it, says Abedel Galindo Meneses, of the Mexican Care Network. Thus, few people can hire quality care services and the working conditions for many workers in the care sector they are deficient.

Los care services They range from “food, shelter, cleanliness, health and accompaniment, to support and transmission of knowledge, social values ​​and practices through processes related to parenting,” according to the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean ( ECLAC).

Those with lower incomes have less access to these services. For example, if they get sick it is almost impossible for them to pay for a decent hospitalization, medicines and what is necessary for a safe convalescence. In addition, with the phenomenon of the privatization of schools, the educational gap between the poor and rich population widened. And for people who work informally, it is less likely that they have childcare services.

And in the spectrum of care and attention services there are several hard-working people who offer their services and who, paradoxically, do not have access to quality care services either. This group would perhaps be led by more than 2.4 million domestic workers.

But it is also made up of nannies, people who are dedicated to preparing food, healthcare professionals physical, mental or oral and education. As well as workers and social workers and other people who work in this central activity for life.

“We have an exclusive market and an indolent State that do not allow society to create other care logic”, says Abedel Galindo in an interview. “We need to defeminize and decommodify care so that it is less unequal and more fair.”

Not only women should take care

the challenge is defeminize care work because 73% of the care tasks that are done within the home are carried out by women unpaid, according to the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (Inegi). In addition, 99% of paid domestic workers are women.

The definition of care work is important because the conditions of those who provide it depend on it, says the Oxfam Care Dictionary and the Mexican Care Network.

“For example, the action of dialyze a person It is not recognized or paid the same if the person who performs it is a family member, a domestic worker, a professional caregiver or a nurse, even if it is the same action and has the same value, ”says the document.

According to the International Labor Organization (ILO), in the health and care sector women make up 67% of staff, but earn three quarters of what their male colleagues do for doing the same job.

Meanwhile, the teaching workforce at the middle and higher levels is 471,000 people, according to the Data Mexico portal of the Ministry of Economy (SE). His average salary is 7,400 pesos a month “working around 27.9 hours a week.” 55% are informal, mainly those who work in private schools, without a written contract or social security.

And according to the Mexican Institute for Competitiveness (Imco), women are in charge of only the 35% of management positions in the education, science and technology sectors. It is in those positions where the best salaries are paid.

Decommodify care work

In societies where the market is the main provider of care, “care is inserted into a capitalist and mercantile logic. In other words, care is monetized, that is, it is paid for, which commodifies life and its care”, says the Dictionary of Care.

The gaps then to get good care services to have a good remuneration for those who perform them are based on social class, gender, ethnic origin and whether they have a disability or not.

Different feminisms have discussed the abolition of paid housework, since the tasks are only transferred from one woman to another. A racialized one.

In Mexico, the Household employees organized have achieved important labor conquests. However, in the absence of a care system, they assume what the State and companies could solve with services, the first, and time or flexible policies, the second.

“Fair pay at domestic workers it doesn’t solve everything. Paying for this work does not solve the problem, rather it complicates it because it moves more what we would do at home if we had public policies and a fair market”, says Abedel Galindo.

“Of course they have to be paid, however, I do not agree with compensating. The care system It has to be woven in such a way that it is recognized monetarily, but it is not only in terms of salary, to the extent that care spaces exist, people will stop paying for care that they can perform” and they could have more opportunities to access jobs what they want

It is also necessary to differentiate los types of care, some involve greater intensity such as care for people with disabilities or degenerative diseases. But actually “in the care of old age and childhood, although they also have a certain degree of intensity, it is important that they can be woven with other options.”

“It is extremely important to see that there are care jobs that must be paid. But others, with recognition of the right to care and receive care they can be carried out from a community or family logic”, having the time and the tools to do it, highlights the specialist.

At the regional level, he warns, “we are behind in this advanced recognition by the State of the right to care. But we are a country that has historically taken care, we are a society that culturally knows how to take care of life. We have to build other imaginaries that are alien to commodification and individualization and closer to the community and the reciprocal”.