Mexico It is the second worst country in Latin America for the labor insertion of women, according to Oxfam, something that is attributed to salary inequality, violence at work and that the housework and care work falls on them, experts warned this International Women’s Day.
(In Mexico) there is a wage gap between men and women, but they are also exposed to situations of bullying, harassment, violence,”
said in an interview with EFE Alexandra Haas, executive director of Oxfam Mexico.
The also lawyer specified that the main reason why Mexico occupies the penultimate place in the region, with only 45% of women of working age in the labor market, is the reduced access they have to formal jobs because they are forced to seek flexible hours to comply with home care.
She explained that care tasks are assigned mainly to women, who perform them 2.5 times more than men, which affects their life project, their economic independence and their autonomy.
They are not only responsible for their own income and their own autonomy, but in general they often have the burden not only of caring, but also financially of children or dependent people”,
detailed.
However, he affirmed, the care networks are the ones that sustain the possibilities of the entire economy of the country.
Exclusion and injustice
Paulina Gutiérrez, member of the organization Citizen Action Against Poverty, stressed that women are the most excluded sector of the labor system, the most violated in their rights to decent work and without sufficient income to overcome poverty.
The data shows that women in the Mexican labor system suffer from a lot of exclusion, a lot of injustice, but they also face gender barriers to their economic inclusion and suffer greater job insecurity.”
the specialist pointed out.
He explained that in Mexico there are 21.5 million women of working age excluded from work, of which 4.4 million are unemployed, looking for work or available and without impediment to work.
In addition, there are 17 million who are not available because they do care and domestic work, without remuneration.
These unpaid tasks have an economic value equivalent to 26 points of the gross domestic product (GDP) of the country, and even so they are classified as “not economically active” population.
93% of the people who are not available is because they are doing this type of work, and they are all women. This seems to us the central point of the exclusion of women.”
asserted.
He indicated that this type of inequalities affect access to health, to decent housing, to having free time to develop one’s personality, to citizen and political participation “and also violate human rights.
No economic autonomy
The specialists agreed that this situation prevents Mexican women from having economic autonomy, which makes them vulnerable to environments of violence and this worsens when they reach old age.
They do not have an income, they do not have an autonomous pension, they do not have the capacity to make their own decisions and exercise their autonomy”,
lamented Haas.
Given this scenario, organizations such as Oxfam and Citizen Action Against Poverty assure that in Mexico it is important to build a progressive and comprehensive public and quality care system that allows the incorporation of women into paid work.
It is going to have to, inevitably, build employment alternatives that adapt to social needs and that move from a very patriarchal model, very much based on a salary for an entire family with the role divided between men and women, to a combination of income”,
Haas said.
Finally, Gutiérrez said that care must be recognized as a job that must “be well paid and try to get all caregivers to enter this industry.”
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