by Adriana Santa Cruz
translation by Alma Estable

"Woman head of household." This sounds like a contradiction in terms in a culture which nurtures the myth of a single type of family: the bread winning father and the mother at home, or perhaps with a part-time job to "help out" with household expenses.

Each of us has internalized this particular image of the family. We not only hold it as an ideal, but believe in it as a given fact. It is the only version of family found in school books and the media, and the political, cultural and religious structures that guide and govern our lives are based on the same myth.

The reality, however, is different. In Latin America, women head over 50 per cent of families in some countries, and not less than 40 per cent in any country. The gap between myth and reality has enormous physical and emotional costs for these millions of women. Women who head families bear sole responsibility for household work, as well as facing great obstacles in the job market. As we all know, women generally earn less than men for the same work; they arc the last hired and first fired.

Women who work as domestics or in the informal work sector as laundresses, street vendors, seamstresses, small farmers, piece workers or prostitutes are especially vulnerable. More privileged women employ domestic help, but to some degree also experience disadvantages. Despite their numbers, female heads of families (most of whom are separated or have been abandoned by their spouses) are practically invisible in their many roles and are totally ignored by society. Although they form a massive group, most women heads of family feel they are living outside the norm (the norm being that mythical family with father as breadwinner). They are isolated and they feel their situation as a single parent is unique. They believe they are living an exceptional and individual problem, rather than a collective fact.

It is essential to bring to the public view the fact that there are millions of women who head families. This reality is not reflected in the economic and social policies of our countries. For example, labour market policies are biased towards obtaining employment for men, who are seen as providers for their families. Similarly, social security policies assume that the husband's job will supply old-age pensions and the cost of medical care for his dependents.

But it is the cultural dimension which both masks and justifies all the other practices. The myth of the family with the woman "at home" also says that her duty is to care for and satisfy her husband (after all, he comes home tired from work). She also must be a good mother who constantly watches over her household and children. If she does not do this she sees herself as a personal failure. The failure of her mythical family becomes her fault, and she is blamed by society. It is time we understand that the breakdown of family life, the crisis in marriage, and the problem of abused and drug-addicted children are not the result of women's liberation, as is often claimed. On the contrary, these social problems have resulted from a continuing series of economic crises, in which the weight of the burden is unequally distributed in our societies. The famous "feminization of poverty" is a reality. Women carry the major responsibility for the care of our children, not only in the traditional role as mothers, but also in terms of economic support.

Far from creating these problems, feminism is the force that draws back the veils which have hidden the reality. Feminism insists that men begin to take responsibility in their homes, including economic responsibility. All our assumptions about the Latin American family must be carefully considered, analyzed and reformulated not only because the pressure exerted on women by traditional family roles is unfair and unjustifiable, but also because, if almost half of the homes of Latin America have a woman at their head, we are not living in the world we believe we are living in.We are therefore making serious mistakes in diagnosing and proposing solutions to social problems. It is time we realized this, and began to build based on this new reality.

From: Fempressllet, Especial: Mujeres Jefas de Familia, Santiago, Chile