Mexico Seeks to Establish Comprehensive Care System

During the special meeting of the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) on Care and Support Systems in New York, Alicia Bárcena Ibarra, head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Mexican government, emphasized that one of the main challenges is for the entire society, not just women, to become involved in care systems.

The redistribution of the disproportionate responsibility for domestic and care work that women have historically faced is a matter of economic and social justice. This work remains invisible and undervalued in many parts of the world, as expressed in the documents of this meeting where Foreign Minister Alicia Bárcena delivered the keynote address.

"An extremely important issue for Mexico is what we have termed as the care society [...] the implementation of comprehensive care systems"

We are talking, the diplomat pointed out, about transforming society as a whole so that caregiving does not fall solely on women, but rather the entire society commits to it because "caring for the elderly means caring for our legacy; caring for children and adolescents means caring for our future and caring for the planet and public goods; we must care for society and the planet."

Currently, she emphasized, this task is mostly carried out by women who do not receive any type of salary.

According to official figures from the International Labour Organization (ILO), 16.4 billion hours are dedicated daily to unpaid care work, equivalent to 11 trillion dollars or 9% of the world's GDP. Additionally, the Gender Report 2023 found that progress towards a fairer balance of unpaid care work has been slow, and globally, women spend 2.8 more hours than men on unpaid care and domestic work, a figure that rises to 6 more hours of unpaid work in Mexico.

Mexico, the foreign minister added, has been a pioneer in measuring to break the statistical silence. It is necessary to measure how many hours women dedicate to unpaid work and what this means in Gross Domestic Product (GDP), which in our country represents the equivalent of 22% of GDP.

"We cannot continue with the absurd division of productive and paid labor and valueless domestic work," she emphasized.

Time and economic autonomy are key to having free and fully entitled women

Transforming societies into care societies and freeing up women's time would allow them to enter the labor market.

"One of the most important points in defending women's rights is economic autonomy because economic autonomy gives physical freedom; without it, women cannot free themselves in other areas of life, a woman cannot continue to depend on the person who abuses her," she stated.

In this context, she emphasized that the next government of President-elect Claudia Sheinbaum will create and consolidate a national care system. She also indicated that next year, Mexico will host the Regional Conference on Women and Development, where the central point will be to advance this vision of a care society to share good practices and establish concrete actions.

Bárcena Ibarra specified that the agenda of this conference will be:

• Breaking the statistical silence
• Care as a common good
• Rights and perspectives of indigenous and Afro-descendant women to recognize traditional knowledge
• Promoting women's access to assets and making them credit subjects
• Women's vulnerability to disasters
• Their role in peacebuilding
• Allocation of budgets to launch a care policy in all our countries

"If we want a healthy society, we need women in freedom," she concluded.

This Special Meeting of ECOSOC provided a platform for Member States, UN Agencies, and stakeholders to recognize and strengthen care work as a fundamental component of the social and economic development of nations.