The plight of female heads of household in the prison system

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By Ivonne Aris­ti­z­a­bal.*

Ac­cord­ing to data from the Na­tional Sta­tis­tics In­sti­tute (INE), 37.2% of house­holds are headed by a woman. Of these, 60% work in the com­mu­nal, so­cial, and per­sonal ser­vices sec­tor, as well as in com­merce, restau­rants, and self-em­ploy­ment. One of the main bar­ri­ers faced by women in the la­bor mar­ket is in­for­mal­ity, with much higher rates than men. This sit­u­a­tion is trans­ferred to pris­ons in our coun­try, where most women are heads of house­hold. This ar­ti­cle seeks to make vis­i­ble the work­ing con­di­tions of women serv­ing prison sen­tences in Buen Pas­tor, the main wom­en’s pen­i­ten­tiary na­tion­wide. The sit­u­a­tion is se­ri­ous and must be ur­gently ad­dressed in Paraguay.

Ac­cord­ing to the In­ter-Amer­i­can Court of Hu­man Rights, “when a woman is de­prived of her lib­erty, her en­tire fam­ily is de­prived“. This phrase ex­poses deep and struc­tural in­equal­i­ties: when a man is de­prived of his lib­erty, it is the woman who is re­spon­si­ble for sup­port­ing the house­hold and car­ing for the chil­dren. Con­versely, how­ever, when women are locked up, the chil­dren tend to grow up in the same con­text of con­fine­ment or in the care of fam­ily. In both cases, it is the moth­ers who try to sup­port their house­holds, even when they are de­prived of their lib­erty.

For the prepa­ra­tion of the ar­ti­cle, data from the an­nual sur­vey of “Corazón Li­bre”, a so­cial pro­ject that sup­ports the re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion and so­cial rein­te­gra­tion of women de­prived of lib­erty at Buen Pas­tor and the ed­u­ca­tion of their chil­dren, were ac­cessed.

The to­tal pop­u­la­tion of the pen­i­ten­tiary is 436 peo­ple (No­vem­ber 2022 data). Ac­cord­ing to the sur­vey, 57% of the women in the sam­ple stated that they were heads of house­hold. Re­gard­ing their oc­cu­pa­tion be­fore con­fine­ment, 83% had an oc­cu­pa­tion (Fig­ure 1).

Fig­ure 1: Oc­cu­pa­tion of women be­fore con­fine­ment

Source: Corazón Li­bre Sur­vey, year 2022.

Re­gard­ing the oc­cu­pa­tional cat­e­gories of the women be­fore con­fine­ment, 48% were self-em­ployed, 21% were em­ployed in a pri­vate busi­ness, while 17% did house­work (Fig­ure 2). It is worth men­tion­ing that 10% did not re­spond to the con­sul­ta­tion.

Fig­ure 2: Wom­en’s oc­cu­pa­tional cat­e­gory be­fore con­fine­ment

Source: Corazón Li­bre Sur­vey, year 2022.

The sit­u­a­tion of these oc­cu­pa­tions shows the drama of for­mal­iza­tion. The vast ma­jor­ity sup­ported their house­holds in in­for­mal con­di­tions. Sev­enty-two per­cent stated that they had not con­tributed to a pen­sion fund, while 95% stated that they did not have a RUC (Tax ID). No­to­ri­ously, pre­car­i­ous, and in­for­mal jobs limit fi­nan­cial in­clu­sion. Sev­enty-nine per­cent of the women in­di­cated that they had never used a bank ac­count and only half (50%) used elec­tronic wal­lets.

It is of utmost urgency to generate policies that focus on the type of population that is currently deprived of their liberty. The promotion and generation of work in decent conditions not only contributes to the reinsertion of women but is also fundamental for them to continue supporting their households when they are left without their main breadwinner.

It is known that the lack of in­clu­sion in the fi­nan­cial sys­tem lim­its eco­nomic au­ton­omy, gen­er­at­ing greater in­equal­ity with re­spect to men. Through ed­u­ca­tion and in­clu­sion, wom­en’s eco­nomic em­pow­er­ment and ac­cess to for­mal prod­ucts with lower costs than in­for­mal ones can be achieved, in di­rect re­la­tion to their eco­nomic sit­u­a­tion.

In re­la­tion to in­come, the ma­jor­ity in­di­cated that they earned less than the cur­rent le­gal min­i­mum wage (SMLV) (Fig­ure 3). Dur­ing con­fine­ment, the high­est per­cent­age of these women kept their in­come be­low the min­i­mum wage. What is strik­ing is that, even un­der these con­di­tions, 21% of the to­tal num­ber of women heads of house­hold send money to their fam­i­lies, thus main­tain­ing their house­holds from the pen­i­ten­tiary through jobs such as clean­ing, cook­ing, hair­dress­ing, and card­board work.

Graph 3: Wom­en’s in­come be­fore con­fine­ment ac­cord­ing to Le­gal Min­i­mum Wage in Force (SMLV)

Note 1: The cur­rent min­i­mum wage is Gs. 2,550,307. Source: Corazón Li­bre Sur­vey, year 2022.

The sit­u­a­tion of the women car­ries over to that of the chil­dren, who can live with their moth­ers at Buen Pas­tor un­til they are four years old. But it is the moth­ers who must cover food, hy­giene and cloth­ing ex­penses. There­fore, for these women and their fam­i­lies, the in­come they gen­er­ate in­side the prison is of vi­tal im­por­tance. Whether they are re­leased or not, there is one re­al­ity that re­mains un­changed, and that is that they con­tinue to be the bread­win­ners of their fam­i­lies.

Con­sid­er­ing the sit­u­a­tion of women heads of house­hold in con­fine­ment, the next gov­ern­ment un­der the re­cently elected pres­i­dent, San­ti­ago Peña, should pro­pose so­lu­tions to the cri­sis of the prison sys­tem with a strong gen­der per­spec­tive. The fact that women heads of house­hold are im­pris­oned con­sti­tutes a so­cial and eco­nomic prob­lem that goes be­yond the prison perime­ter. With­out an ap­proach that makes this sit­u­a­tion vis­i­ble, the prob­lem would not even be iden­ti­fi­able.

As a first step, poli­cies are needed to ben­e­fit women de­prived of their lib­erty from an ap­proach that con­sid­ers their fam­i­lies, con­sid­er­ing their com­po­si­tion, the em­ploy­ment sit­u­a­tion of their mem­bers, the way in which care is or­ga­nized and their so­cioe­co­nomic sta­tus.

These poli­cies should be based on the Bangkok Rules es­tab­lished by the United Na­tions in 2010. It is the most com­pre­hen­sive doc­u­ment on the rights of women de­prived of lib­erty cur­rently in ex­is­tence, which also show­cases the sit­u­a­tion of the chil­dren of these women. It sets out a se­ries of prin­ci­ples that poli­cies should con­sider, such as gen­der-sen­si­tive train­ing for prison staff and care for nurs­ing moth­ers, giv­ing pri­or­ity to girls and boys.

In­di­vid­u­al­iz­ing and iden­ti­fy­ing the con­di­tions of these women, such as nurs­ing moth­ers or those who have their chil­dren in chil­dren’s homes in­side pris­ons, will also be es­sen­tial to pro­duce pub­lic poli­cies aimed at this pop­u­la­tion from a gen­der and ba­sic el­e­men­tary rights per­spec­tive.

In Paraguay’s prison sys­tem there is a sig­nif­i­cant level of over­crowd­ing and other con­di­tions that can limit peo­ple’s so­cial rein­te­gra­tion. This is worse in the case of women, es­pe­cially those who are the eco­nomic heads of house­holds. It is of ut­most ur­gency to gen­er­ate poli­cies that fo­cus on the type of pop­u­la­tion that is cur­rently de­prived of their lib­erty. The pro­mo­tion and gen­er­a­tion of work in de­cent con­di­tions not only con­tributes to the rein­ser­tion of women but is also fun­da­men­tal for them to con­tinue sup­port­ing their house­holds when they are left with­out their main bread­win­ner.

* Econ­o­mist and Re­search Co­or­di­na­tor of the “Corazón Li­bre” pro­ject.

Cover im­age: Yuki Yshizuka