“The street is my son’s dad”: Conciliating Productive and Reproductive Work in the Streets of Bogotá

Abstract

This paper aims at studying how female street vendors who live in Bogotá with children between the ages of 0 and 5 years reconcile work and family responsibilities, and argues that law does not take into account their needs when creating legal mechanisms aimed at reconciling the tension between family and work, or when designing the rules that apply to public child care services in Bogotá. More specifically, we argue that the universe of possibilities that female street vendors have to reconcile paid and unpaid care work is particularly limited; that within those possibilities women prefer to leave their children in the care of their closest family members, or pay for “private” child care services; and that none of the women interviewed chose as their first option public child care services nor used the mechanisms that labor law provides to reconcile family and work, either because they are not applicable or they do not take into account their real needs.