Guatemala City: a focus on working women and childcare

This paper assesses the problems that female headed household face in terms of employment and childcare in Guatemala, and examines the impact of a public daycare programme on their employment opportunities and the nutrition of their children.

Findings:

• the number of urban women who work for an income in Guatemala increased to 28% in 1999, 20% more than at the beginning of the decade. Working mothers are more likely than non-working mothers to be of indigenous ethnicity
• 63% of urban Guatemalan women hold jobs in the informal sector where they work in petty trading, domestic service, tortilla shops and other eateries
• working mothers rely heavily on informal childcare, however the availability of informal care is limited for many women, particularly those who have migrated from rural areas and thus left behind their extended family and other easily accessible informal caregivers
• the limited availability of childcare options is thought to be one of the reasons why women in many urban areas suffer higher rates of unemployment than male household heads, and the reason for limited chances to take advantage of the better paying jobs in the growing formal sector, where children cannot accompany their mothers to work
• a quarter of the children of the working mothers surveyed in Guatemala City were in formal daycare, the overwhelming majority of which were privately run, and thus relatively expensive

The government sponsored Hogares Comunitarios (Public Daycare) program aims to address the childcare needs of poor women as well as the levels of malnutrition and lack of preschool attention received by the poorest children in the city. The report finds that the program reaches its targeted population: families of working parents with few resources and particularly families where mothers are the main income-earner. It has also had significant impact of the program on the diets of participating children.

Policy implications:

• given the important contribution of public child care in enabling mothers to work and their children to be well cared for, the Hogares Communitarios program has proven itself worthy of expansion
• reducing barriers to obtaining employment is crucial for helping to lift women and their families in the urban slums of Guatemala out of poverty
• access to reliable and affordable daycare can enable mothers to work in settings not compatible with caring for their kids and often in higher paying work
• increasing the availability of subsidised formal daycare in poor urban areas is a viable option, which can increase the labor participation rates of women and ensure safe and reliable childcare for preschoolers