ABSTRACT
Investment in gender-responsive social protection systems and evidence is key to a more equal future post-COVID-19.
Subject(s)
COVID-19 , Public Policy , Caregivers , Employment , Female , Gender Equity , Humans , Male , Violence , Women, WorkingABSTRACT
In recent years, several middle-income countries, including Chile, Mexico and Uruguay, have increased the availability of early childhood education and care (ECEC) services. These developments have received little scholarly attention so far, resulting in the (surely unintended) impression that Latin American social policy is tied to a familialist track, when in reality national and regional trends are more varied and complex. This article looks at recent efforts to expand ECEC services in Chile and Mexico. In spite of similar concerns over low female labour force participation and child welfare, the approaches of the two countries to service expansion have differed significantly. While the Mexican programme aims to kick-start and subsidize home- and community-based care provision, with a training component for childminders, the Chilean programme emphasizes the expansion of professional ECEC services provided in public institutions. By comparing the two programmes, this article shows that differences in policy design have important implications in terms of the opportunities the programmes are able to create for women and children from low-income families, and in terms of the programmes' impacts on gender and class inequalities. It also ventures some hypotheses about why the two countries may have chosen such different routes.
Subject(s)
Child Care , Cross-Cultural Comparison , Education , Public Assistance , Social Class , Women, Working , Child , Child Care/economics , Child Care/history , Child Care/legislation & jurisprudence , Child Care/psychology , Child Day Care Centers/economics , Child Day Care Centers/education , Child Day Care Centers/history , Child Day Care Centers/legislation & jurisprudence , Child Welfare/economics , Child Welfare/ethnology , Child Welfare/history , Child Welfare/legislation & jurisprudence , Child Welfare/psychology , Child, Preschool , Chile/ethnology , Education/economics , Education/history , Education/legislation & jurisprudence , History, 20th Century , History, 21st Century , Humans , Mexico/ethnology , Public Assistance/economics , Public Assistance/history , Public Assistance/legislation & jurisprudence , Social Class/history , Uruguay/ethnology , Vocational Education/economics , Vocational Education/history , Vocational Education/legislation & jurisprudence , Women, Working/education , Women, Working/history , Women, Working/legislation & jurisprudence , Women, Working/psychologyABSTRACT
This article explores the influence of religious actors on the elaboration of two public policies that are key to the advancement of women's rights and have long formed part of the women's movement's agenda in Chile: the introduction of sexual education in secondary schools in the 1990s and the distribution of emergency contraception in the 2000s. Our analysis of how different actors-from a variety of ideological and power positions-have influenced the two policy debates suggests that their discourses and strategies are highly contingent on the political environment. While conservative religious forces retain an enormous capacity to hinder policy making and implementation in the arena of family and sexuality, the government's determination to confront such interference seems to have grown in a context of fewer authoritarian enclaves, a more pluralist society and a strong sexual and reproductive rights movement. The diversification of religious positions on issues of family and sexuality has also affected the room for manoeuvre in the policy arena.