The fight to guarantee the rights of women in Mexico has made progress in recent years, but it still needs to be a reality in all the spaces in which they operate. This was considered by experts, officials and legislators when participating in the Expansion Meeting entitled ‘Women at Work’. In the event, in which they participated Belen Sanz Luque UN Women representative in Mexico, Senator Patricia Market ; Geraldina Gonzalez de la Vega president of the Council to Eliminate and Prevent Discrimination of Mexico City; Martha Tagle former federal deputy, and Maria Jose Alcala president of the Mexican Olympic Committee and the Sports Commission of the Chamber of Deputies, pointed out that it is necessary to make visible the work of women and the value of unpaid tasks, as well as the inequalities that persist in order to generate a more even floor and guarantee the fulfillment of their rights.
“It is that all people have the right to be cared for and the State must have the infrastructure to do so. It is not a paternalistic or maternalistic approach, it is a rights approach”.
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Belén Sanz, the representative of UN Women Mexico, pointed out that one of the crises that deepened the COVID-19 pandemic was the massive loss of jobs for women, because, according to figures from the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (CEPAL), it would be going back up to 12 years what was achieved in participation in the labor market and its insertion processes in the formal market. Another crisis was that of care, since many women had to leave their jobs to dedicate themselves to caring for children and the family, for which he said it is necessary to regulate the matter and that there are public policies where investment is made in development. institutional and where the private initiative participates. She stressed that the time women spend on care tasks is three times that of men. And for this reason, the issue of care must contemplate having infrastructure such as nurseries, care centers for the elderly and all this must go hand in hand and with the efforts of employers. In the last legislature in the Chamber of Deputies, the constitutional reform was achieved to recognize the right to dignified care and it was turned over to the Senate, where there is no progress. In this regard, former deputy Martha Tagle, who participated along with the legislators in the approval, stressed that the importance of becoming a constitutional right is that you involve the State. “When you define it as a right, the duty to guarantee it belongs to the State,” she commented, explaining that when this is approved, work must be done on the necessary public policies and then talk regarding co-responsibility to ground it in practical cases. The former legislator emphasized that it is necessary to translate the care issue into day-to-day life and generate the narrative in all sectors so that it becomes a “more forceful requirement” so that it can be approved in the Senate of the Republic.
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Senator Patricia Mercado argued that it is necessary to recognize the responsibility of the State in care tasks, in terms of Article 4 of the Constitution, whose reform is in the Senate, which has not come out because every time it is included in the order of the day, “disappears”. “We need to have a strong State that can have more robust social protection policies,” said the legislator of Movimiento Ciudadano.
It is urgent to take it to the workplace The president of Copred CDMX emphasized that the issue of care must also be taken to the field of employers and the labor market to guarantee the rights of women and with this they can get out of the circle of violence. “At the end of the day, the fact that women have an income and can have economic autonomy allows us in many cases to get out of issues of violence,” she explained at the Expansión Meeting. I think it is very important to see how we can put the issues in the field, it is important to see how you light up the dark streets, how I make sure there is a safe place for each space for women, in sports, how I give them security.
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For her part, María José Alcalá, the first woman to preside over the Mexican Olympic Committee, explained that in the sports field there are gaps not only with those who practice it, but also with judges and referees, and even with the authorities that comprise it. “In its conception, the International Olympic Committee is not for women (…) we might not even go to see the Olympic Games, now women have more presence although it is still complicated in women”, he recalled regarding the differences that are experienced even when there are already more spaces and competitors, but not the same supports. Not only in the sports sector, in the world of work inequalities and violations of women’s rights continue to occur. Geraldina González commented that complaints of dismissal due to pregnancy occupy the first place in Mexico City, except last year when they were surpassed by health issues such as COVID-19. The president of Copred referred that this has to do with co-responsibility policies that force women to be, who from the perspective of employers ‘do not perform as workers’, so they end up firing them or harassing them to resign, when everything this is discriminatory. The participants recalled that the wage gap between men and women remains. Senator Mercado explained that one of the things that can help is transparency, that is to say that salaries and positions are visible, because with this it is shown that although in terms of the total number of workers, there are more women, “in terms of salary They are at the bottom of the salary pyramid. In turn, Belén Sanz referred that the wage gap continues to be a deep wound, since 50% of women earn a minimum wage, that is, there are many more women who earn less, so from Congress this rights agenda where the salary gap is very important, it can be addressed.
More than an expense, an investment
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Although they agreed that resources are needed for a care system and to have public policies, that does not mean that it will be overnight, but that there are several fiscal spaces to advance, added to the fact that it is not an expense but an investment. . According to UN Women Mexico, together with INMUJERES and the ECLAC Subregional Headquarters in Mexico, investment in care policies generates a triple dividend since, in addition to contributing to people’s well-being, it allows direct and indirect job creation. of quality and facilitates the participation of women in the labor force, which means a return of income for the State through taxes and contributions and a higher income for people. “If you make a progressive investment to expand these services (…) a significant investment of public resources would have to be made, but in relation to the returns that this generates in terms of job creation, participation of women in the labor market and tax collection because it is formal work, we would have a gap of -0.5% because there is a triple dividend from investing in a system and the dividend is economic, as well as social and human rights”, explained Belén Sanz.
