With free laundry and salsa classes, Bogotá tries to care for its unpaid caregivers

Gloria González has been caring for others since she was a child. From the age of 7, she was expected to tend to her little brother and make charcoal to sell.

Like many women in Colombia, Ms. González has frequently struggled to balance the burden of unpaid care duties with the need to work a job to pay the bills.

But two years ago Ms. González, who now cares for her grandchildren, came across a newly renovated building in Engativá, her low-income neighborhood in Bogotá. Inside, the bustling Manzana del Cuidado, or Care Block, changed the course of her life, after dedicating decades tending to others at the expense of her own professional experience and schooling.

“This place reminded me I wasn’t alone,” says Ms. González, beaming from a bench in a flower-filled garden in the multibuilding complex.

In 2020, Bogotá’s municipal government opened its first-ever Care Block in an attempt to recognize the vital, often unpaid work of caregivers like Ms. González. Each of the city’s 23 Care Blocks offers a dizzying range of free services specifically for caregivers, the vast majority of whom are women.

The idea is to recognize and lighten their load, and potentially break down gender stereotypes around who can – or should – provide caregiving. There are on-site laundromats, offices with legal aid and psychological support, sexual health clinics, yoga and dance sessions, and classrooms for study, as well as day care to watch children or relatives while their caregivers use the facilities. 

After just four years, already there are plans to expand the blocks, not only within Bogotá, but also in other Latin American countries.

“These women are the heartbeat of society,” says Diana Rodríguez, Bogotá’s former women’s affairs secretary, who helped develop the initiative. “We rely on them to raise us, to feed us, to clean up after us. That’s why we have to support them.”

Women shouldering unpaid labor

More than 30% of Bogotá’s female population – 1.2 million women – provides care full time without being paid, according to City Hall. Their work has the estimated value of the equivalent of 13% of the capital’s gross domestic product. 

It’s a similar picture worldwide. There are 647 million full-time unpaid caregivers globally, and nearly 95% of them are women, according to a 2018 report by the International Labor Organization. Women and girls provide 12.5 billion hours of care every day, Oxfam estimates, an output that if valued at minimum wage would be worth $10.8 trillion a year – over double that of the global tech industry. Analysis of data for 89 countries last year by UN Women found that women spend 2.8 more hours than men on unpaid care and domestic work every day.

Bogotá’s Care Blocks – which were created by former Mayor Claudia López, the city’s first female mayor – have been hailed as a groundbreaking effort to address that gendered care gap.

The services are clustered under one roof, and the centers are distributed evenly across the city. That means caregivers here can maximize their limited time instead of having to walk long distances, get stuck in traffic, or make multiple stops for different activities and services.

The Care Blocks are “a pioneering project in the region,” says Ana Güezmes, director of the gender affairs division of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), because they “address structural challenges that limit gender equality and women’s autonomy.”

Broadly, the program’s three main goals are to raise recognition of the importance of caregiving among the general public and caregivers themselves, to reduce the overall care burden, and to encourage redistributing caregiving duties from women to men.

Feeling free – and valued

The city spends $800,000 annually on the project, and the new mayor, Carlos Fernando Galán, has pledged to continue the work. That includes plans to nearly double the number of Care Blocks to 45 locations by 2035.

Meanwhile, ECLAC is working with federal governments in Chile, Colombia, and Brazil, and with municipalities in Mexico, to design “comprehensive care systems” inspired by Bogotá’s Care Blocks. 

“The creation of concentrated service areas are relevant for any urban context,” says Ms. Güezmes of ECLAC.

But there is still plenty of work to be done.

A 2023 study by the University of the Andes in Bogotá found that Care Block users often gained “a new meaning to care and their role as caregivers” and that the employment support had helped some women, though not many, find paid work.

The greatest challenge, however, has been getting men to take up care work, according to the researchers.

“When we spoke to the caregivers, we noticed there was a change in [that] they saw their work as valuable,” says Natalia Ramírez Bustamante, co-author of the report. But redistributing the “work is much more difficult. It depends on the will of the husbands.”

The researchers also found challenges to accessibility for people with severe disabilities, and that some caregivers still have to travel great distances to reach the nearest Care Block.

And yet, the services have proved popular. Between January and March 2024, more than 45,000 women tapped into the centers’ resources, according to Bogotá’s City Hall. That includes 2,648 caregivers receiving employment training; 743 earning diplomas for information technology literacy and English, among other skills; and 1,822 using the free, on-site washing machines. 

Ms. González regularly does yoga, Pilates, and salsa classes, and uses the laundromat, and she took an entrepreneurial course to help her find work. As of last year, she runs a small shop selling fragrant herbs and essential oils, inspired by her grandmother.

“I have worked all kinds of jobs during my life,” says Ms. González. “But now I feel free; I feel valued. And I have a support network. It’s totally different.”

Solange Martinez visits the Engativá Care Block for English classes while her 18-month-old baby is looked after in the on-site day care. Before discovering this space, “I could barely leave the house,” says the young mother.

“Every day new women arrive to sign up,” says Jenny Paola Molina, coordinator of the Care Block in Engativá. Some centers have proved so popular that women must rotate in and out of the system once every three months so that everyone gets a turn. “Sometimes we have to turn them away,” she says.

On a recent sunny morning in Engativá, a salsa class is kicking off, with music blasting from the sound system. Ms. González is in the mix, moving to the rhythm among dozens of dancers.

“We women,” she says, “are stronger together.”