Social Movements, care crisis and new opportunities for regional cooperation: the regional integration of female domestic paid workers in Latin America

JORGELINA LOZA

Regional and international cooperation in South America after COVID

Routledge

Lugar: Nueva York; Año: 2022; p. 181 - 197

Latin American feminisms have a long tradition of supranational cooperation, which has been widely explored by gender studies from the 1980s onwards. The most recent example of this regionalization is the mobilization for the legalization of abortion that has been replicated in several Latin American countries, and the fight against gender-based violence that has spread from Argentina all across the region since 2015.These experiences show that civil society might have reduced its participation in regional integration processes although it hasfurthered its supranational bonds across borders, under the assumption of a pre-existent regional sense of belonging. While regional intergovernmental initiatives evidence a severe crisis, Latin American civil society strengthens its regional ties through transnational cooperation, facing the post-COVID scenario.We will focus on a contemporary regional initiative of Latin American women, CONLACTRAHO, and the ways they are introducing new possibilities of regional integration. This chapter will explore the history of the Confederation formed in 1988 by female domestic paid workers from Latin America, as well as its current initiatives in the context of care crisis and Covid-19 crisis. From a qualitative, intersectional, and decolonial approach, ze coincidences and differences between the civil society agenda and the gender agenda of regional intergovernmental organisms will be analyzed. We understand that pointing out those differences might help foster the decision-making process and the design of public policies. Finally, this chapter aims to analyze the evolve of regional cooperation regarding domestic work and care tasks in Latin America.