Should Citizen´s Income Become a Goal for Feminism in Latin America?

CORINA RODRÍGUEZ ENRÍQUEZ

Citizen´s Income and Welfare Regimes in Latin America. From Cash Transfers to Rights.

Palgrave Macmillan

Lugar: New York; Año: 2013; p. 187 - 210

In feminist academic circles (and to a lesser degree in the environment of feminist activism) the pertinence of supporting a universal Citizen?s Income (CI) has been discussed. Two main positions can be distilled from the hitherto open-ended debate. These can be roughly summarized as follows. On the one side are those that maintain that a CI in practice would function just like pin money for women, keeping them from joining the labor market, and confining their work to care responsibilities in the home. The other side unites defenders of the opposite opinion: CI would give women a minimal economic autonomythat would strengthen their position in other spheres, including the home, where they would be able to negotiate the distribution of care-related responsibilities more equally, and the labor market. The objective of this chapter is to take up this debate and place it in the specific context of Latin America, where the discussion might assume special characteristics for several reasons. First, women?s participation in the labor market, albeit markedly increasing, remains relatively low in the region. Second, the region?s weak social protection systems have historically failed to guarantee basic levels of income to the population. Third, the ways that care is socially organized concentrates most responsibilities on the unpaid care work exercised by women (effectively one of the main determinants of their weaker employment records). Fourth, the spread of conditional income transfer programs targeting women with dependent under-age children that can be observed in Latin America, and could provide useful lessons for this discussion