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Measuring inequality of opportunities in Latin America and the Caribbean
Equality of opportunity is about leveling the playing field so that circumstances such as gender, ethnicity, place of birth, or family background do not influence a person's life chances. Success in life should depend on people's choices, effort and talents, not to their circumstances at birth. 'Measuring Inequality of Opportunities in Latin America and the Caribbean' introduces new methods for measuring inequality of opportunities and makes an assessment of its evolution in Latin America over a decade. An innovative Human Opportunity Index and other parametric and non-parametric techniques are presented for quantifying inequality based on circumstances exogenous to individual efforts. These methods are applied to gauge inequality of opportunities in access to basic services for children, learning achievement for youth, and income and consumption for adults.
eBook
From Homemakers to Breadwinners to Community Leaders
In From Homemakers to Breadwinners to Community Leaders , Norma Fuentes-Mayorga compares the immigration and integration experiences of Dominican and Mexican women in New York City, a traditional destination for Dominicans but a relatively new one for Mexicans. Her book documents the significance of women-led migration within an increasingly racialized context and underscores the contributions women make to their communities of origin and of settlement. Fuentes-Mayorga’s research is timely, especially against the backdrop of policy debates about the future of family reunification laws and the unprecedented immigration of women and minors from Latin America, many of whom seek human rights protection or to reunite with families in the US. From Homemakers to Breadwinners to Community Leaders provides a compelling look at the suffering of migrant mothers and the mourning of family separation, but also at the agency and contributions that women make with their imported human capital and remittances to the receiving and sending community. Ultimately the book contributes further understanding to the heterogeneity of Latin American immigration and highlights the social mobility of Afro-Caribbean and indigenous migrant women in New York.
eBook
Midwives and Mothers
The World Health Organization is currently promoting a policy of replacing traditional or lay midwives in countries around the world. As part of an effort to record the knowledge of local midwives before it is lost, Midwives and Mothers explores birth, illness, death, and survival on a Guatemalan sugar and coffee plantation, or finca, through the lives of two local midwives, Doña Maria and her daughter Doña Siriaca, and the women they have served over a forty-year period.By comparing the practices and beliefs of the mother and daughter, Sheila Cosminsky shows the dynamics of the medicalization process and the contestation between the midwives and biomedical personnel, as the latter try to impose their system as the authoritative one. She discusses how the midwives syncretize, integrate, or reject elements from Mayan, Spanish, and biomedical systems. The midwives’ story becomes a lens for understanding the impact of medicalization on people’s lives and the ways in which women’s bodies have become contested terrain between traditional and contemporary medical practices. Cosminsky also makes recommendations for how ethno-obstetric and biomedical systems may be accommodated, articulated, or integrated. Finally, she places the changes in the birthing system in the larger context of changes in the plantation system, including the elimination of coffee growing, which has made women, traditionally the primary harvesters of coffee beans, more economically dependent on men.
eBook
The Latin American Cohabitation Boom, 1970-2007
The article describes the rise of unmarried cohabitation in Latin American countries during the last 30 years of the twentieth century, both at the national and regional levels. It documents that this major increase occurred in regions with and without traditional forms of cohabitation alike. In addition, the striking degree of catching up of cohabitation among the better-educated population segments is illustrated. The connections between these trends and economic (periods of high inflation) and cultural (reduction of stigmas in ethical domains) factors are discussed. The conclusion is that the periods of inflation and hyperinflation may have been general catalysts, but no clear indications of correlation were found between such economic factors and the rise in cohabitation. The shift toward more tolerance for hitherto stigmatized forms of conduct (e.g., homosexuality, euthanasia, abortion, single-parent household) is in line with the rise of cohabitation in regions of Argentina, Chile, and Brazil where cohabitation used to be uncommon. Further rises in cohabitation during the first decade of the twenty-first century are expected in a number of countries (e.g., Mexico) despite conditions of much lower inflation.
Journal Article
Rituals and Sisterhoods
Rituals and Sisterhoods reveals the previously under-studied world of plebeian single women and single-female-headed households in colonial Mexican urban centers. Focusing on the lower echelons of society, Amos Megged considers why some commoner women remained single and established their own female-headed households, examining their unique discourses and self-representations from various angles. Megged analyzes these women's life stories recorded during the Spanish Inquisition, as well as wills and bequests, petitions, parish records, and private letters that describe-in their own words-how they exercised agency in male-dominated and religious spaces. Translations of select documents and accompanying analysis illustrate the conditions in which women dissolved their marriages, remained in long-lasting extramarital cohabitations, and formed female-led households and \"sisterhoods\" of their own. Megged provides evidence that single women in colonial Mexico played a far more active and central role in economic systems, social organizations, cults, and political activism than has been previously thought, creating spaces for themselves in which they could initiate and maintain autonomy and values distinct from those of elite society. The institutionalization of female-headed households in mid-colonial Mexico had wide-ranging repercussions and effects on general societal values.Rituals and Sisterhoods details the particular relevance of these changes to the history of emotions, sexuality, gender concepts, perceptions of marriage, life choices, and views of honor and shame in colonial society. This book will be of significant interest to students and scholars of colonial Latin American history, the history of Early Modern Spain and Europe, and gender and women's studies.
eBook
Women's Short-Term Employment Trajectories Following Birth: Patterns, Determinants, and Variations by Race/Ethnicity and Nativity
Despite a large literature documenting the impact of childbearing on women's wages, less understanding exists of the actual employment trajectories that mothers take and the circumstances surrounding different paths. We use sequence analysis to chart the entire employment trajectory for a diverse sample of U.S. women by race/ethnicity and nativity in the first year following childbirth. Using data from the 1996-2008 panels of the Survey of Income and Program Participation and sample selection models, we find that women employed before childbirth show a high degree of labor market continuity. However, a notable share of them (24 %) took less stable paths by dropping out or scaling back work. In addition, mothers' attachment to the labor force is simultaneously supported by personal endowments and family resources yet constrained by economic hardship and job characteristics. Moreover, mothers' employment patterns differ by race/ethnicity and nativity. Nonwhite women (blacks, Hispanics, and Asians) who were employed before childbirth exhibited greater labor market continuation than white women. For immigrant women, those with a shorter length of residence were more likely to curtail employment than nativeborn women, but those with longer duration of residence show greater labor force attachment. We discuss the implications of these findings for income inequality and public policy.
Journal Article
Do our children have a chance? : a human opportunity report for Latin America and the Caribbean
This book reports on the status and evolution of human opportunity in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). It builds on the 2008 publication in several directions. First, it uses newly available data to expand the set of opportunities and personal circumstances under analysis. The data are representative of about 200 million children living in 19 countries over the last 15 years. Second, it compares human opportunity in LAC with that of developed countries, among them the United States and France, two very different models of social policy. This allows for illuminating exercises in benchmarking and extrapolation. Third, it looks at human opportunity within countries, across regions, states, and cities. This gives us a preliminary glimpse at the geographic dimension of equity, and at the role that different federal structures play. The overall message that emerges is one of cautious hope. LAC is making progress in opening the doors of development to all, but it still has a long way to go. At the current pace, it would take, on average, a generation for the region to achieve universal access to just the basic services that make for human opportunity. Seen from the viewpoint of equity, even our most successful nations lag far behind the developed world, and intracounty regional disparities are large and barely converging. Fortunately, there is much policy makers can do about it.
eBook
Institutionalizing Segregation: Women, Conditional Cash Transfers, and Paid Employment in Southern Ecuador
Conditional cash transfers have become the tool of choice in poverty reduction throughout the Global South, granting women significant access to social protection. Yet, their inclusion has not necessarily resulted in more equal gender outcomes in employment. This paper addresses the question: to what extent has targeted social protection supported women in creating a more level playing field in the labor market? Two cities in the south of Ecuador form the context of new empirical evidence gathered to study the Bono de Desarrollo Humano program (Ecuador) used to explore narratives of dependence associated to the provision of conditional cash transfers in a context marked by deep-rooted gender inequalities. The paper argues that the essentialist views of women's capacities that underpin conditional cash transfer hinder their intended transformative impact, failing to introduce changes that would otherwise permit women to take full-time secure employment or move toward guaranteeing their social rights.
Journal Article
Migration and Father Absence: Shifting Family Structure in Mexico
Despite many changing demographic processes in Mexico—declining adult mortality, rising divorce, and rising nonmarital fertility—Mexican children's family structure has been most affected by rising migration rates. Data from five national surveys spanning three decades demonstrate that since 1976, migration has shifted from the least common to the most common form of father household absence. Presently, more than 1 in 5 children experience a father's migration by age 15; 1 in 11 experiences his departure to the United States. The proportions are significantly higher among those children born in rural communities and those born to less-educated mothers. The findings emphasize the importance of framing migration as a family process with implications for children's living arrangements and attendant well-being, particularly in resource-constrained countries. The stability of children's family life in these regions constitutes a substantial but poorly measured cost of worldwide increases in migration.
Journal Article