Convinced that there is a need to invest in the care economy and build care and support systems that are strong, resilient and sensitive to gender, age and disability-inclusive issues, the General Assembly decided to proclaim October 29^th as the International Day for Care and Support.

Realities and statistics support such a proclamation:

-A total of 249 million women and 132 million men make up the global caregiving workforce.

-It is expected that by 2030, the number of people receiving this care will rise to 2.3 billion, a figure that will be significantly increased by 100 million more older people and by 100 million more children between the ages of 6 and 14.

-Women perform 76.2 percent of all unpaid care work, dedicating 3.2 times more time than men to such work.

-Currently, at least 8 million older people in Latin America and the Caribbean require long-term care, and given this continuous demographic shift, this figure could triple to 23 million by 2050.

That International Day has yet to come, but days are already being held in different parts of the world, including Cuba, to make care and caregivers visible, placing co-responsibility at the center of agendas, according to the Cuban Network of Care Studies.

Regarding this critical occupation of care, the coordinator of this Network, sociologist and university professor Magela Romero Almodóvar, in addition to stressing the need to achieve this co-responsibility, recalled that "Care is not a problem. This is a job, a practice, a social relationship. They have to do with culture and human connections, almost always loving, that we establish between family, friends, neighbors..."

"The problem is, actually," points out the expert, "the caring crisis, because it is a scenario where there is an imbalance between the demand and supply of care." It is not by chance that the National System for the Comprehensive Care of Life in Cuba was approved last December.

The System is aimed at children from zero to 12 years of age, the elderly and disabled, those who require temporary care due to illness or accident, and people who are devoted to caring.

Among its priorities, it is necessary to recognize the economic and social contribution of care work, which is expected to be carried out through the Labor Code and the future Social Security Law that will be introduced next year in the National Assembly of People's Power, reports the newspaper Granma.

And last September, the monthly meeting of the subcommittee on care systems was held at the Ministry of Labor and Social Security (MTSS), which had among its topics of analysis the national project for the construction of protected residences for the elderly, proposals for topics on care that should be included in the different levels of education, the creation of strategies for credit facilities for initiatives of non-state forms that offer care services, as well as the action plan of the Cuban Network of Studies on Care by next October.

But the regulations, systems and strategies already created or in the process of implementation are not enough, the general director of employment of the MTSS, Ariel Fonseca Quesada, commented in the last session of the international meeting Care, development and social justice: policies, approaches, actors and good practices, held in Havana last June, that "just regulating these processes and the existence of the law does not guarantee a transformation."

This is because a cultural shift of essences is required, which pays tribute to that true co-responsibility within families and in society as a whole. This would allow a fair redistribution of that care for life.

Today, these responsibilities are still marked by patriarchal patterns that let the greatest weight fall on the women of the house, and much convincing and action remains to be forged to understand that the work of caregivers is a job, also a right and, at the same time, a support for social welfare.

Transforming those conceptions that make these care tasks fall fundamentally on women, to the detriment of their time, their life projects and with low social and economic recognition is one of the great changes to which Cuban policies and society are doomed, was reiterated during that international meeting on Care.

Economy and Care

Unpaid care work is also an economic contribution to GDP, as described by the coordinator of the Cuban Network of Studies on Care, and argued by asking: "If right now, for example, families stop caring for the bedridden or dependent people they care for, how much would it cost the State to guarantee the well-being and life of those people?"

Recognizing the economic value of unpaid care in all that it entails will also bring greater visibility to those who take it on as well as greater recognition.

To this economic facet is added the involvement in these tasks of non-state workers, which, not infrequently, makes the income gap in the population more visible, to the point that, as Romero Almodóvar referred, while there are families who hire these private services, there are also elderly people in other homes, and sometimes also disabled or with little validity, caring for a relative.

All this, deepened by the difficult situation that Cuba is experiencing, under a tightened U.S. blockade and also marked by internal economic distortions and other internal problems in which emigration conspires decisively against the number of young people who could help or assume the care of their elders or other relatives in need of attention and who, on the contrary, it adds to the existence of elderly people who live alone or homes where all their members are elderly.

The UN stresses on its official website the need to "recognize and value paid care work and caregivers as essential workers. Measures must also be taken to combat gender stereotypes related to care and support, as well as those related to race, ethnicity, age or immigration status, to reduce occupational segregation in care work."

Likewise, with regard to paid care and domestic work, it urges to facilitate the transition from informal to formal work and decent work; to create quality jobs in the care economy and increase the reward and representation of paid domestic workers, including caregivers.

The UN is emphatic in indicating that "It is equally necessary to make effective the right of women to work and the rights at work of those who have care responsibilities, including equal pay for work of equal value."

In Cuba, and as reported by the aforementioned general director of employment of the MTSS, Fonseca Quesada, the institutional management of the Comprehensive Care System for Life is linked to the Government Commission for Attention to Demographic Dynamics, which is headed by the Prime Minister of the Republic, is made up of 17 ministers and heads of national entities and boasts the involvement of two permanent commissions of the National Assembly and the advisories of the Center for Demographic Studies of the University of Havana and the National Office of Statistics and Information.

Although the care referred to here is not limited to the elderly, the challenges that currently mark the Cuban population dynamics with a marked aging, make this National Care System a cornerstone in the exercise of the rights and for the well-being of care and caregivers, of society as a whole and without gender inequalities, because this responsibility must be everyone's in coherence with the humanist model of development that Cuba defends.

Translated by Sergio A. Paneque Díaz / CubaSí Translation Staff