MARÍA JOSÉ BECERRA MORO| ENGENDERING SOCIAL SECURITY AND PROTECTION diately after the mother takes her leave. In Ecuador, that right is set in its Constitution; in Peru, workers in the pub­lic and private sectors are granted paid paternity leave by law; in Venezuela, 14 consecutive days are granted from the day the child is born(Barker and Verani 2008). Non-contributory insurance: CCT programmes have emerged as an important instrument of economic and social policy and various countries in the region have implemented these types of programmes. Two of the best-known programmes are Progresa in Mexico(sub­sequently renamed Oportunidades), and Bolsa Familia in Brazil, which is the largest of its kind in the world, with over 11 million families as beneficiaries. Evaluations indicate that these cash transfer programmes have ef­ficiently achieved their objectives concerning poverty reduction and the levelling of opportunities(Barrientos and DeJong 2006; González de la Rocha 2008; Suarez et al. 2006): These programmes have helped to improve nutrition, infant health, and education, as well as to re­duce child labour. However, programmes focusing on poverty reduction have not always proved good practice from a gender perspective: Cash payments are often paid to mothers. But even though it has been shown that cash transfers made directly to women have positive impacts on the well-being of the family, unease has arisen regarding the design of these cash transfer programmes, because they tend to reinforce conventional gender-based employ­ment divisions(UN 2009; Cecchini and Marinez 2011). In some cases, they have even resulted in women leaving the labour market in order to comply with the conditions imposed by a given CCT(Latapi and González de la Rocha 2009; Molyneux 2009; ECLAC 2006; Adato et al. 2000). Inequality of access to the labour market and in­come gaps: Despite the equalisation of education for men and women, this educational achievement has nei­ther been translated into an equivalent increase in the participation rates, nor in the levels of income, nor in pari­ty of access to quality employment for women. Increased educational level do not result in a diminishing income gap between men and women in the region. In fact, wo­men with lower educational levels are paid 68 per cent of male incomes, while women with higher educational levels(13 years of education or more) earn the equivalent of 69 per cent of male incomes(ECLAC 2010). The gen­der wage gap persists across all educational levels. Workload and unpaid employment: Given the cultu­ral patterns in the division of labour between the sexes, Latin American women continue to do the domestic and unpaid work even when they have paid work. Also, since domestic work as well as childcare and nursing the sick and aged is traditionally assigned to women, the pro­portion of women without incomes independent of their spouse is significantly higher than that of men. Without formal employment, these women are generally outside the contributory benefits systems associated with partici­pating in the labour market(unemployment, sickness and pension insurances). On the other hand, employed women also have to spend significant amounts of time on domestic work, so that no matter how long their wor­king week is, they usually spend much more time than their male counterparts in domestic work(ECLAC 2010). 4. Good Examples to Learn From Regarding institutionalism and the recognition of paid and unpaid employment: The Venezuelan Con­stitution of 1999 explicitly recognises housework as an economic activity that generates aggregate value and improves wealth and social quality, and it grants the right of each and every person to social security, which specifically includes housewives. In the case of Ecuador, the Constitution of 2008 guarantees the universal and irrevocable right to social security; furthermore, it recog­nises unpaid housework and caring that is carried out in households as productive labour. In Bolivia, the New Constitution of 2008 recognises the economic value of housework as a source of wealth that is to be quantified in the public accounts(ECLAC 2010). The labour market – aiming for parity between men’s and women’s salaries: Some countries have star­ted to establish explicit legislation obliging employers not to discriminate on the grounds of gender and to respect the principle of equal pay between men and women car­rying out the same work. In Colombia the Labour Code (Código Sustantivo del Trabajo) and its regulatory decrees and related provisions establish, among other things, the banning of differential pay scales based on gender. In the Dominican Republic the text of the new Constitution, pro­claimed in 2010, recognises the concept of equal pay for equal work. In Chile, an Equal Salaries Law for men and women has been established that applies to employees in both the public and private sectors(ECLAC 2010). 4