As the great actress of the Golden Age of Mexican cinema, María Félix, said: “we have to be more autonomous, more masters and mistresses of our destiny, so we can do more for this country.” Avant-garde phrase for that time, but still valid.
Autonomy is intrinsically linked to having one's own financial and material resources that are sufficient and, furthermore, to being able to exercise control over them. A non-trivial combination that remains a challenge for millions of women in our country. Today, how many women can say that they have economic autonomy?
But even measuring economic autonomy is complex, each person defines what level of income is sufficient according to their reality. On the other hand, the lack of control of one's own resources may be related to violence in the home, which tends to be underreported. There is no single or sufficiently precise indicator, but one way to approach the lack of economic autonomy is to measure the proportion of the population that does not receive its own income.
According to the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), in Mexico 25% of women do not receive their own income, a proportion that is reduced to 6% in the case of men. Although Mexico is average for Latin America, it lags behind countries like Bolivia and Uruguay, where this figure is reduced to 12% and 13% for women, respectively.
To better understand the lack of economic autonomy of women, we must begin by analyzing the gender disparity that exists in the distribution of time that men and women dedicate to work, paid and unpaid. This relationship is inverted: according to ECLAC itself, of the total working time, women in Latin America allocate 64% to household and care work, while men allocate 72% to the labor market.
Analyzing how much more time women dedicate than men to household and care tasks without receiving remuneration in return is another way of measuring this gender gap. In all Latin American countries, the relationship is at least twice as long; However, there are economies where it quadruples, such as Honduras, or even quintuples, as is the case of Guatemala.
Consequently, Mexican women depend at least twice as much as men on income that comes from sources other than employment, such as social programs, remittances or transfers from family members, including their partners. Evidence shows that women reduce their expenses or borrow money up to four times more than men due to their role as caregivers, which reduces their room for maneuver to decide freely in a country where the social norm of “who” continues to predominate. pay command.”
I knew it since then the lady and we confirm it today, every International Women's Day: to be more autonomous, we need to have our own income. To the extent that women have economic independence, that is, their income depends less and less on someone else, they will be able to make their own decisions. Thus, we will be, increasingly, owners and mistresses of our destiny.
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