Verónica Montúfar has spent decades organizing alongside working women to demand public investment, decent jobs, and shared responsibility for care. In conversation with CESR, she traces the roots of a feminist trade unionism that has long named and resisted the injustice of how care is organized and commodified. From the privatization of public services to the capture of care systems by corporate interests, she points to what must be rebuilt, and how.
“I’m a sociologist by profession and a trade unionist by choice.” That’s how Verónica Montúfar introduces herself—briefly, but with intent. A longtime ally of the Center for Economic and Social Rights (CESR), Verónica currently serves as Equality Officer at Public Services International (PSI), a global union federation that brings together more than 700 unions and represents 30 million workers in 154 countries. For decades, she has built bridges between theory and activism, always grounded in the collective struggles of working women.
Across different contexts, feminists and workers share a common demand: to recognize and value care work through decent jobs, public investment, and shared responsibility. When public services are missing, inadequate, or privatized, the burden of care falls overwhelmingly on women and girls—reinforcing cycles of inequality.
Verónica’s political journey began at 17, when she supported a textile workers’ strike in her home province of Pichincha, Ecuador. “That strike gave us the opportunity to create spaces for dialogue, reflection, and political education,” she recalls. “We talked about what it meant for workers to become conscious of their power.” Since that early experience, Verónica has stayed close to organizing processes, seeing education and consciousness-raising as essential for social transformation.
Feminism through trade union organizing
For Verónica, feminism and union organizing have never been separate. “What later became the political and theoretical development of feminism in its many forms was first seeded in the union movement—especially by women workers,” she explains.
Long before terms like “unpaid care work” were common, Verónica and her colleagues were naming these realities in conversations with workers. They spoke of women’s “double shifts”—holding paid jobs while also managing most household responsibilities. “We even talked about a ‘triple shift,’” she adds, “when women are also union leaders or activists, adding another layer of work and time.”
Challenging market logic: towards a new social organization of care
A central theme in Verónica’s current work is how we talk about and understand care. “The concept of the care economy—while useful for highlighting the economic value of care—has been instrumentalized by powerful actors to turn care into a market commodity.”
Alongside other feminist thinkers such as Corina Rodríguez Enríquez, Verónica has been working to reclaim a broader political framework: the social organization of care—an approach CESR strongly supports and contributes to. This perspective shifts the debate away from market logic and re-centers the role of the state, human rights, and gender justice. “Today’s social organization of care is unjust, unequal, and unsustainable. It hasn’t changed the fact that the primary burden still falls on women.”
What Verónica proposes is not a technical fix or a macroeconomic adjustment, but a profound reimagining, one that puts life at the center: who cares, how, under what conditions, and with what support. This means affirming care as a human right and a public responsibility.
Public services, tax justice, and corporate capture
Verónica doesn’t shy away from naming structural forces. In response to the argument that “public services don’t work, so it’s not worth paying taxes,” she is blunt: “The public sector’s lack of capacity is the result of privatization agendas. If public services worked well, private companies wouldn’t be able to enter.”
She goes further: “Instead of investing public resources in public services, governments are channeling public funds into private businesses to deliver those same services. It’s a direct transfer of collective wealth into corporate profit.”
This logic is particularly damaging in the care sector, where demand is rising—driven by aging populations, growing disability rates, and the systematic undervaluation of reproductive labor. “We’re growing older every day. There’s a massive business opportunity here, and capital knows it,” she warns.
But resistance is growing. Movements around the world are calling for a reinvestment in public care systems. A key example is the Care Manifesto, a PSI-led initiative urging governments to rebuild care systems on the basis of equity, public investment, and a gender-transformative approach. CESR is proud to support this effort, in line with our commitment to publicly funded, rights-based economic policies.
South–South dialogue and hope
From her international position, Verónica sees enormous potential in strengthening ties across regions. “Within the feminist movement, there’s more space to build links between Latin America, Asia, and Africa. At PSI, our global structure means we already share common frameworks across these regions.”
But she’s also clear that debates unfold differently. “Care has advanced more in Latin America, not just in feminist organizing, but also in public policy.” Still, she sees a growing global consensus: that care workers deserve decent jobs, and that care must be reclaimed as a public good and a human right.
In the face of disillusionment (especially post-pandemic) Verónica invokes Brazilian educator Paulo Freire: “I am not hopeful out of naivety, but out of historical necessity.” Hope, she insists, is not passive; it is a political practice.
“Despair paralyzes us. What we need is to build a social force that not only resists, but transforms. And that’s not something you get from short-term governments—it comes from deep, organized social power.”
A message to new generations
For those just beginning to organize—whether in feminist, labor, or public service struggles—Verónica is clear: “We need you. Without you, this dies. Not just in terms of time, but in terms of ideas.”
She recognizes that struggles shift, and so do the people who lead them. “My mother fought different battles. I’ve fought my own. Today, there are new struggles—for bodily autonomy, for sexual and reproductive rights, for dignity in care work… and it’s young people who are on the front lines.”
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Our blog series Key Voices features testimony and analysis from CESR allies advancing a rights-based transformation of the economy. From different regions and experiences, they show that structural change is not only necessary: it is possible.