Imploding and redrawing care regimes in Latin America: opportunities and challenges for women’s economic empowerment

Abstract

We provide an overview of the care regime in Latin America and its associated adaptive (market- and family-based) strategies available to women at the bottom and the top of the income distribution. In an effort to convey the high inequality that currently cuts across adaptive and/coping mechanisms in work and care in Latin America, we regularly make comparisons with adaptive strategies to reconcile work and family in European countries. The relatively equal income distribution and relatively homogeneous care regimes within these countries stand in contrast to the highly unequal income distribution and class divide found in Latin America. Yet, legal and policy changes can indeed deliver changes in Latin American care regimes, as long as they simultaneously tackle several adaptive mechanisms at once. The example we draw upon here is the case of Uruguay.