Reimagining care: Voices and demands of adolescents and young people in the region
We want to change care work to build a more egalitarian world!
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During October 2022, 69 adolescents and young people aged 15-24 from 21 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean participated in three virtual dialogue sessions to talk empathetically and share their experiences on how care work has affected their childhood, adolescence and youth and how it impacts their daily lives, limiting their possibilities to project themselves.
Adolescents and young people from rural and urban areas, Afro-descendants, members of indigenous communities, including women with disabilities and sexual dissidence, participated in the dialogue sessions and took the opportunity to dream about how they would like the social organization of care to be in the future. They also identified the main challenges and proposals to build a more just society in terms of gender equality.
Below, find some of what adolescents and young people in the region have said and what they think:
"This unequal distribution of work is something that has been happening from generation to generation. Our grandmothers and mothers experienced it, we experienced it. We all have to raise our voices in order to change it and that it doesn't continue to happen" (Adolescent girl from South America).
How do we, adolescent girls and young women in Latin America and the Caribbean, experience the unequal distribution of care work?
As adolescents and young women, we witness in our countries and communities the unfair distribution of care work and we can see how this impacts negatively on the access to opportunities and on the exercise of fundamental rights such as quality education, decent jobs, leisure time, promotion of our health and wellbeing, among others.
These inequalities can be exacerbated by other circumstances, which leads to increased vulnerability, for instance, being Afro-descendants, indigenous people, coming from a disadvantaged socio-economic background, living with a disability or having been forced to leave our countries, among other reasons.
Adolescent pregnancy is something that many of us experience in our lives. Most of us, when we become pregnant either due to lack of comprehensive sexuality education or as a consequence of sexual violence, are forced to stay at home and work as caregivers.
There are several pregnant girls at school and the first thing that is done is to kick them out of their home and school so that they go and live with their boyfriends (Adolescent girl from Central America).
How does excessive burden of care work affect our dreams and life projects?
Excessive burden of care work affects us insofar as it is postulated as an unavoidable destiny. The weight of traditional gender roles and norms imply that, for many of us, the only possible destiny is to bear children, have a husband and to care for others:
However, despite the difficulties and the fact that most adolescent girls and young women in the region face situations of extreme inequality, some of us do feel privileged and we do believe that we can project ourselves and dream of a better future, in most cases thanks to the efforts and hardships suffered by our own mothers:
The burden of care work affects me less, but I saw that it did affect my mum in a negative way. She couldn't go after her dreams because she had to take care of me ( Young woman from the Caribbean).
For black women from the periphery, care work is something that has been conditioned since slavery. Care work has been presented to us as the only way for us to achieve social advancement. Eradicating this structure is the only way for us black women to occupy other spaces that are not just about care (Young woman from South America).
This is why, drawing on our own experiences, we want to turn care work into a choice: the right to care, the right to self-care and the right not to provide care.
Care work engages us, challenges us in our present and conditions our future.
We want to reimagine care work to build a more equal world! In order to achieve this, these are our:
Reimagining a society of care: Voices of adolescents and young women
In preparation for the XV Regional Conference on Women, UNICEF in coordination with UNFPA, UN Women, ECLAC and UNHCR facilitated a series of regional dialogues with adolescents and young people to learn their perspectives on "The Society of Care: Horizon for a Sustainable Recovery with Gender equality". Their perceptions were captured in a short document that synthesizes how the distribution of care affects their present and future lives and their main recommendations to reimagine care work to build a more equal world.
