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Mexico.- In 25 years, 30 million jobs will be needed to care for older adults in Latin America due to population aging, said Maria Noel Vaeza, Regional Director of UN Women for the Americas and the Caribbean.
“Our region is losing the demographic dividend and we are aging very rapidly. We think that 30 million jobs should be created in the next 25 years for the care of older adults and that will mean a new dynamic,” he explained.
At the beginning of the VII Ibero-American Summit of Local Gender Agendas and the XV Ibero-American Congress of Municipalists in Guadalajara, Noel Vaeza insisted on the need for care work to be professionalized so that it becomes formal employment and that people have constant training.
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In the presentation of a study about care in Latin America, it was recalled that women are the ones who perform this type of activities the most and do so almost always without pay or in informal work.
“Women working in the informal sector are generating bread for today and hunger for tomorrow because they are not generating a social security system. Countries will have to invest in contributory systems; the more women we have in the informal sector, the less that social security system will respond,” she said.The UN Women representative stated that countries that invest in a care system for children and adolescents, the sick or disabled, have a greater chance of growing and developing a better quality of life.
Faced with this, she proposed the professionalization of those dedicated to caregiving, so that they have tools that allow them to better care for people and in dignified and fair conditions.
“We cannot continue to leave our loved ones in the hands of women who have no benefits, we have to create a sense of a career for caregivers and also certify them,” he stated.
He also pointed out that 17 countries in Latin America have pushed from some local or national sphere public policies that have women at the center of care.
