Credit: Corte IDH/Twitter
By Inés M. Pousadela
MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay, Aug 28 2025 – On 7 August, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights delivered a groundbreaking decision that could transform women’s lives across the Americas. For the first time in international law, an international tribunal recognised care as an autonomous human right. Advisory Opinion 31/25, issued in response to a request from Argentina, elevates care – long invisible and relegated to the private sphere – to the level of a universal enforceable entitlement.
The court’s decision emerged from a highly participatory process that included extensive written submissions from civil society, academics, governments and international organisations, plus public hearings held in Costa Rica in March 2024. The ruling validates what feminist activists have argued for decades: care work is labour with immense social and economic value that deserves recognition and protection.
Three dimensions of care
The statistics that informed this ruling tell a stark story. In Latin America, women perform between 69 and 86 per cent of all unpaid domestic and care work, hampering their careers, education and personal development. The court recognised this imbalance as a source of structural gender inequality that needs urgent state action.
The decision defines care broadly, covering all tasks necessary for the reproduction and sustenance of life, from providing food and healthcare to offering emotional support. It establishes three interdependent dimensions: the right to provide care, the right to receive care and the right to self-care.
The court interpreted the American Convention on Human Rights as encompassing the right to care, making clear states must respect, protect and guarantee this right through laws, public policies and resources. It outlined measures states should take, including mandatory paid paternity leave equal to maternity leave, workplace flexibility for carers, recognition of care work as labour deserving social protection and comprehensive public care systems.
Feminist advocacy vindicated
The court’s decision reflects the profound influence of feminist scholarship. For decades, feminist activists have insisted that care work, overwhelmingly performed by women, is invisible and undervalued despite being central to sustaining life and economies. The court’s recognition validates these arguments, affirming that care work isn’t a natural extension of women’s roles confined in the private sphere, but labour with immense social and economic value.
The court’s intersectional approach represents another crucial victory for feminist movements. The advisory opinion acknowledged that care burdens aren’t evenly distributed among women: Indigenous, Afro-descendant, migrant and low-income women face disproportionate responsibilities and multiple layers of discrimination. This recognition aligns with feminist movements’ emphasis on the ways gender, race, class and migration status intersect to shape inequality.
Significantly, the court explicitly connected self-care with access to sexual and reproductive health services, recognising that genuine wellbeing requires the ability to make free and informed decisions about pregnancy, childbirth, motherhood and bodily autonomy. It stressed that all people – including women, transgender people and non-binary people who can become pregnant – should be free from imposed mandates of motherhood or care.
Civil society’s crucial role
This victory belongs to civil society. Feminist and human rights organisations across Latin America campaigned to bring the issue before the court and provided crucial expertise. Groups such as ELA-Equipo Latinoamericano de Justicia y Género, Dejusticia, the Global Initiative for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and Women in Informal Employment-Globalizing and Organizing submitted arguments and evidence that shaped the court’s reasoning.
Organisations documented the realities of women caring for incarcerated relatives, migrant women working care jobs in precarious conditions and communities lacking basic services such as water and sanitation that make unpaid care work even more burdensome. This helped ensure the court’s opinion reflected social realities rather than abstract principles.
The opinion’s transformative potential extends beyond gender equality. By recognising care as a universal human need, it positions it as a cornerstone of sustainable development. Investments in care infrastructure create jobs, reduce inequality and support women’s workplace participation while ensuring that children, older people and people with disabilities can live with dignity and autonomy.
The road to implementation
While advisory opinions aren’t binding, they carry considerable legal and political weight, setting regional standards that influence constitutional reforms, strategic litigation and policy development. This decision provides a blueprint for societies where care isn’t an invisible burden but a shared and supported responsibility.
However, feminist organisations have noted a crucial limitation: the court’s decision not to designate the state as the primary guarantor of care rights creates an ambiguity that risks allowing governments to offload duties onto families, perpetuating the inequalities the decision aims to address.
Civil society faces the crucial task of ensuring that implementation prioritises state responsibility. The test lies in transforming legal recognition into laws, policies and practices that reach those most in need. The struggle now shifts from the courtroom to the political arena. Feminist movements are already preparing strategic cases and launching campaigns to pressure governments to pass laws, allocate budgets and build required infrastructure.
States must pass laws recognising the right to care, design universal care systems, integrate time-use surveys into national accounts and build robust care infrastructure. Employers must adapt workplaces to recognise caregiving responsibilities. Civil society and governments must challenge gender stereotypes and engage men and boys in care work.
The Inter-American Court has shown what’s possible: societies where care is valued, supported and shared. For the millions of women across the Americas who have carried this burden in silence, the work of turning this historic recognition into lived reality begins now.
Inés M. Pousadela is CIVICUS Senior Research Specialist, co-director and writer for CIVICUS Lens and co-author of the State of Civil Society Report.
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