ECLAC Calls for Accelerating the Achievement of Substantive Gender Equality and the Care Society on the Occasion of the International Day of Care and Support

On 29 October 2025, the International Day of Care and Support, proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly in 2023, will be commemorated. This date seeks to raise awareness of the centrality of care in our societies and its contribution to people's well-being and prosperity and to the achievement of gender equality and sustainable development.

On 29 October 2025, the International Day of Care and Support, proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly in 2023, will be commemorated. This date seeks to raise awareness of the centrality of care in our societies and its contribution to people's well-being and prosperity and to the achievement of gender equality and sustainable development.

The Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) has proposed a paradigm shift in development: the care society, a form of social organization and renewed multilateralism that prioritizes the sustainability of life and the care of people and the planet. This paradigm recognizes care as a growing need throughout the life cycle, a human right, a global public good, and essential work that drives the economy as a whole.

ECLAC reaffirms its commitment to the countries of the region to advance with care policies and systems at the local, national, regional and international levels. The care society recognizes the interdependence between people, the environment and socioeconomic development.

The region has a significant body of intergovernmental agreements and a policy framework on care that was further consolidated in 2025.

In August 2025, at the XVI Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean, held in Mexico City and organized by ECLAC in coordination with UN-Women and the Government of Mexico, the States adopted the Tlatelolco Commitment, which establishes a decade of action (2025-2035) in Latin America and the Caribbean to accelerate the achievement of substantive gender equality and the care society through transformations in the political, economic, social, cultural and environmental spheres.

In the document presented by ECLAC at the Conference in Mexico, entitled The Care Society: Governance, Political Economy and Social Dialogue for a Transformation with Gender Equality, scenarios were analyzed and strategies and recommendations proposed to advance towards the care society. According to the publication, eight countries have adopted laws that establish policies and create national care systems; 15 countries have established maternity leave of at least 14 weeks (ILO Convention No. 183); and four countries have implemented paid parental leave. In terms of statistical progress, 24 countries have official measurements on time use, and five have officially calculated a satellite account of unpaid household work.

In the Tlatelolco Commitment, countries recognize that the proposal of the care society put forward by Latin America and the Caribbean to the world is a new paradigm for sustainable development, equality and peace, and they commit to promoting measures to overcome the sexual division of labour and move towards a fair social organization of care. Thus, the Tlatelolco Commitment strengthens the Regional Gender Agenda -built upon intergovernmental agreements adopted over the past 50 years- by recognizing the human right to care, which includes people's right to provide care, to receive care, and to exercise self-care.

Along these lines, also at the regional level, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights set a historic precedent by becoming the first international tribunal to rule on the content and scope of the right to care and its interrelation with other rights, in its Advisory Opinion 31 of 2025, adopted on 12 June 2025. This pronouncement recognized care as an autonomous human right and underscored the obligation of States to guarantee its effective exercise through adequate public policies, services and infrastructure.

In the Tlatelolco Commitment, States are urged to strengthen regulatory frameworks, policies, programmes and sustainable comprehensive care systems that respect the rights of those providing and receiving care. In the same agreement, Governments called upon the resident coordinator system in the region to incorporate the commitments assumed in the Conference meetings, which form part of the Regional Gender Agenda, into the United Nations Sustainable Development Cooperation Frameworks, as appropriate, in order to create synergies and avoid duplication of efforts. This underscores the need to ensure the effective implementation of the agreement at the national level.

Governments also emphasized the need to incorporate the care dimension into national planning, with a gender, human rights and territorial perspective, and to strengthen the capacities of subnational and local governments for the implementation of care policies in territories. Countries committed to significantly increasing financing and mobilizing the maximum available resources at the local, national and international levels for substantive gender equality policies and the strengthening of comprehensive care systems. This is in line with the debates of the Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development (30 June-3 July 2025). In the Seville Commitment, adopted at that Conference, countries agreed to increase investment in the care economy, recognizing, valuing and redistributing equitably the disproportionate burden of unpaid domestic and care work performed by women.

ECLAC and the ILO estimate that, in order to reach international standards, resources allocated to care would need to be gradually expanded to achieve a gross annual investment of 4.7% of GDP by 2035, according to the ILO Simulator on Investments in Care Policies, updated in collaboration with ECLAC and expanded to 23 countries of the region.

"This is a significant investment, but with enormous benefits. These include the creation of 31 million jobs in the 23 countries for which information is available, which would represent 12% of the projected labour force in 2035; the reduction of the gender gap in the labour market, with women's employment rate rising from 52.9% in 2019 to a projected 63.2% in 2035, thereby contributing to GDP growth; tax revenues equivalent to around 19% of the cost of the investment; and significant health and well-being benefits for current and future generations, poverty reduction, and opportunities for training and development for people and society as a whole," stated José Manuel Salazar-Xirinachs, Executive Secretary of ECLAC.

In this context, another collaborative initiative should be noted between ECLAC, CAF-Development Bank of Latin America and the Caribbean, the Inter-American Development Bank, the Governments of Chile and Mexico (countries chairing regional intergovernmental forums), and other strategic partners such as UN-Women, the International Labour Organization (ILO), the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Global Alliance for Care. This is the Investment Accelerator for Care Policies and Comprehensive Care Systems in Latin America and the Caribbean, which seeks to drive investment in care policies and systems.

The centrality of care from a gender perspective has gained relevance in public policy guidelines at the multilateral and intergovernmental levels during 2025. For example, at the Eighth Meeting of the Forum of the Countries of Latin America and the Caribbean on Sustainable Development (Santiago, 31 March-4 April 2025), Governments reiterated, in the agreed conclusions and recommendations, the importance of achieving sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth and of analyzing paid and unpaid care work and its relation to the changing world of work.

At the Sixth Meeting of the Regional Conference on Social Development in Latin America and the Caribbean (Brasilia, 2-4 September 2025), Governments agreed, in Resolution 6(VI), to strengthen social protection systems by incorporating non-contributory protection policies with universal aspirations, such as comprehensive care policies. They also underscored the importance of labour inclusion policies, non-contributory pension systems and comprehensive care policies for the strengthening and expansion of social protection systems.

Furthermore, on 29 and 30 October 2025, the Sixth Meeting of the Presiding Officers of the Regional Conference on Population and Development will be held at ECLAC, to analyze progress in the implementation of the Montevideo Consensus on Population and Development. The agreement calls for the development of universal care policies and services based on the highest human rights standards, and takes into consideration the Santiago Declaration, adopted at the Fifth Regional Intergovernmental Conference on Ageing and the Rights of Older Persons in Latin America and the Caribbean (December 2022), which called for the implementation of policies and programmes for prevention, care, preventive care, curative, palliative and specialized care, as well as the promotion of healthy ageing to improve the quality of life of older persons.

The Second World Summit for Social Development, to be held in Doha, Qatar, from 4 to 6 November 2025, will be a propitious space to reaffirm these commitments at the global level. Member countries of the Regional Conference on Social Development in Latin America and the Caribbean have resolved to bring to this forum the proposal to adopt a Global Pact for Inclusive Social Development, aimed at creating conditions to eradicate poverty and reduce inequalities, so that people may achieve well-being sustained by high, sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth. This requires solid public policies that include the centrality of care systems, within the framework of universal, comprehensive, sustainable and resilient social protection systems.

On this third commemoration of the International Day of Care and Support, ECLAC reiterates its call to act now to achieve the care society and build a more inclusive, productive and sustainable future, in which the care of all people and of the planet is placed at the center of public policies across all sectors, levels of government and branches of the State. Acting with a sense of urgency entails focusing on the "how," that is, on the key elements for carrying out the necessary transformations: governance and institutions, political economy and social dialogue, cultural change, statistics and financing. In other words, achieving the care society requires intergenerational collective action, public policies, strategic investment and regional cooperation.

Related content

Get ECLAC press releases by e-mail.