We are delighted to virtually welcome Professor Jennifer M. Piscopo, from the Royal Holloway University of London, to present ‘Care as a Public Good and a Human Right: Latin America’s Transformative Care Agenda’ as part of our Seminar Series.
Date: 17th February 2026
Time: 12:30-13:30 UK time
Online event, please click here to register using a Google form.
Having trouble accessing this form? Please contact us via our website, or email centreforcare@sheffield.ac.uk.
About the seminar
In August 2025, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR) issued an international tribunal’s first-ever ruling about the right to care. The IACHR affirmed three dimensions to care as a human right: the right to be cared for, the right to give care, and the right to self-care. The ruling has profound implications: if care is a human right, then governments are obligated to ensure its provisioning.
The IACHR’s decision reflects a broader political shift in Latin America, one further undergirded by the region’s 2025 Tlatelolco Commitment obligating governments to build ‘a care society’. This presentation charts Latin American countries’ efforts to realize this goal, from policies that factor unremunerated domestic work into national systems of accounts to the adoption of universal care systems. In particular, Bogotá, Colombia’s pioneering “streets of care” initiative, implemented in 2020, offers continuing education, economic empowerment, and respite services to carers. Across the region, women’s movements and feminist policy elites have made the economic case and the moral case for care, moving it into the public sphere while entering the vanguard of innovative care policies
About the presenter
Jennifer M. Piscopo is Professor of Gender and Politics and Director of the Gender Institute at Royal Holloway, University of London. Her research focuses on women’s political representation and gender and public policy in Latin America, the United States, and the globe. She is author of The Women’s Right Era: 50 Years of Gender Equality Advocacy and Reform (Polity Press, forthcoming). Her work also has appeared in over 30 peer-reviewed journals, including The American Political Science Review, The American Journal of Political Science, Social Politics, Comparative Political Studies, Latin American Politics and Society, and Politics & Gender. Currently, she co-edits (with Phillip Ayoub) the European Journal of Politics and Gender. She consults regularly for international organizations and national governments, including the Organization of American States, UN Women, and United Cities and Local Government.
Please click here to register using a Google form.
Having trouble accessing this form? Please contact us via our website, or email centreforcare@sheffield.ac.uk.
The Centre for International Research on Care, Labour and Equalities (CIRCLE) and Centre for Care Seminar Series
In this seminar series we invite colleagues, partners and experts, whose work aligns with the mission of our Centre, to share their work with us and our audiences, to deepen our understanding of the critical issues in social care in the UK and around the world.
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