(NEWS FROM THE ILO) .- Latin America will host, for the second consecutive time, the IV World Conference on Child Labor (Argentina, 2017). The last world event (Brasilia, 2013) had social protection as a strategic way of preventing and eliminating child labor as the central topic of debate. In this, we hope that the subject is deepened and introduces in the debate the connection between equality and economic policies, with social and childhood policies. Inescapable connections if you want to advance in the fight against child labor and provide the sense of urgency you need.

Although it is not possible to speak of recipes, there was consensus that social protection policies (and I would add with a gender equality approach) can counteract the negative effects of child labor and prevent the early entry of children and adolescents into exploitation situations. In fact, as already pointed out in the debates prior to the Third World Conference on child labor, the structural data on child labor show a very high incidence in those population groups linked to agriculture and forms of unpaid family work, which warns of the existence of forms of child labor that take place preferably in economic activities of high informality, great invisibility and in situations of rurality or isolation, with weak institutional frameworks and strong deficits in public services. This, added to the fact that the differences occur not only between countries, but are reproduced within each one (regions within the same country and even within the same city).

The most recent statistical estimates indicate that 168 million girls and boys in the world are in a situation of child labor, a figure that is around 11% of the entire child population, according to the latest ILO global report [2]. and in the case of Latin America and the Caribbean, that figure is estimated at 12.5 million (without considering the number of girls who perform dangerous domestic tasks in their own home, depriving them of education, health and development according to their age) Therefore, the problem continues to be of great importance in a region of the world where economically positive growth has been registered, even with the tendency to deceleration that is registered differently in some countries.

The need to provide a sense of urgency to the dynamics that revert these situations of human rights violations goes hand in hand with the need to broaden the views on the issue to address its most structural causes. Power relations, discrimination and exclusion play an important role in the world of work. Not only between women and men, but also between adults and girls and boys; between the productive and the reproductive; between paid and unpaid. Hence the relevance of highlighting that gender inequality also explains the phenomenon of child labor. And if its analytical approach is not broadened, the use of “classic” instruments in the fight against child labor is exhausted when talking about specific issues such as child domestic work,

To speak of violation of rights is to speak of poverty of time, income, resources, hidden poverty of dependency, poverty of capacities and opportunities, inequalities, precariousness, lack of power, exclusion, discrimination women, compared with men of the same class and condition, fare worse). Endless factors that also determine why child labor persists in the 21st century. Without going into detail, let's think: Are all these issues in the public arena? An immediate answer would be: not with the force they require, and above all, not always interconnected.

What topics are on the agenda when we talk about the economy in Latin America and the Caribbean? Which ones are on the equality agenda? What are the issues that enter the debate in the region when we refer to childhood and adolescence? And to child labor? Do you talk about the distribution of time and the total workload between women and men, between families, the State, the market and the community? Something common to all of this would be to put life at the center to promote other dynamics that generate real equality from childhood. And this claim has been a fundamental contribution of feminists to the economy, which requires intertwining the transformations of everyday life with macro policies.

To speak of feminist economics is to speak of the economy as a social fact, a great network of networks where all lives are connected and interdependent. It is talking about the connection between paid and unpaid work to understand the socio-family dynamics that are not exempt from conflicts. It is talking about care, the distribution of time and the total load of the work. All of this connects with equality and, of course, with childhood, because when we talk about distributions, we are talking about the social organization of care for all family members and the functioning of the economic system on which they are based.

Talking about childhood and child labor also requires that distribution of time, responsibilities and work between women and men, between families, the State, the market and the community, because although childhood and adolescence are stages for sharing learning moments, with recreation and rest, their adult referents should provide them with the necessary sustenance for a complete development. This is achieved if the total workload is shared, that is, if men are involved in care and unpaid work (mainly carried out by women today); if we maternalize society (that values ​​and make visible all those contributions without monetary value) and dematernalize women (in order to achieve equal results, beyond opportunities, in all areas of life).

At the end of the day, think of a life that deserves the joy of being lived in the face of the accumulation of capital that the markets advocate. Because inequalities between women and men and child exploitation as well as so many other discriminations have no place if we put the sustainability of life at the center of all our proposals. Economic, social, equality and childhood policies are part of the same puzzle that we want to compose. Let's go for it!

Click here to read the thesis "Beware of the economy! A feminist reading of child labor and its elimination strategies in Latin America and the Caribbean" , by Elena Saura.

[1] Economist, specialist in Gender and Development, has more than 15 years of professional experience in international cooperation, fundamentally in the conception, elaboration and analysis of policies, strategies and programs of cooperation and equality.

[2] ILO / IPEC (2013): Measuring progress in the fight against child labor - Global estimates and trends between 2000 and 2012. ILO, Geneva.