The exclusion of rural women in two social security schemes: Rural Social Security and the Labor Justice Law

• Main Author: María Gracia Naranjo Ponce
• Format: Article
• Language: Spanish
• Published: Universidad San Francisco de Quito 2018-12-01
• Series: Iuris Dictio
• Subjects: Social Security; Rural Social Security; Householders; Unpaid Work; Housewives; Intersectionality

Rural women in Ecuador are a disadvantaged group whose basic right to social security is not fully granted. This paper analyzes how rural women lie over a thin line between two diferent special social security regimes —the Rural Social Security System and the one enshrined in the Organic Law of Labor Justice and Recognition of Housework—, without any of them granting full benefts; which violate their constitutional right to access to social security. The aim of this paper is to show how over rural women converge two forms of identity that put them at a disadvantage vis-à-vis other women and the Ecuadorian population in general, and how the law has neglected to guarantee a right as basic as social security, incurring in discrimination. Therefore, possible reforms are proposed to the two regimes, and the situation of rural women is analyzed from the eyes of intersectionality.