This Wednesday, the executive director of Fundación ChileMujeres, Francisca Jünemann, and the former Minister of Finance and director of the Foundation, Mario Marcel, presented before the Labor and Social Security Committee of the Chamber of Deputies. They presented a series of proposals for the bill that equalizes the right to nursery care (Bill No. 14,782-13), within the framework of the substitute amendments of June 15, 2026. The Foundation highlighted that nursery care has become a State policy. The bill has received contributions from three governments: that of Sebastián Piñera, which introduced it in 2022; that of Gabriel Boric, with its amendments in 2025 and 2026; and the current one of José Antonio Kast. Today, Article 203 of the Labor Code guarantees nursery care only to mothers working in companies with 20 or more female workers, which represents barely 10% of companies. This makes hiring women more expensive and leaves out all dependent mothers who do not work in companies with 20 or more women hired, as well as independent workers, domestic workers, and fathers and small businesses. Chile has a nursery care coverage of only 14% for children aged 0 to 23 months, compared to the OECD average of 22%. The labor participation gap between men and women with children under two years old reaches 26.7 percentage points. According to the Gender Zoom of ChileMujeres, OCEC UDP, and the Santiago Chamber of Commerce, the bill could generate between 15,753 and 144,726 new female jobs and raise GDP between 0.1% and 0.8%.
"These proposals seek to regain cross-party support for the nursery care bill, taking from the previous administration that the compensation of the contribution be 0.1% of the individual fund of the unemployment insurance, which belongs to the workers. And taking from the current administration the concern not to establish additional contributions that continue to increase labor costs given the high levels of unemployment, especially female unemployment, that our country suffers," said Francisca Jünemann.
"The financing proposal we present seeks to ensure the sustainability of the nursery care system over time, without generating new burdens for employers. To this end, we propose a different distribution of contributions that allows adequately financing the benefit. It is essential that the financial design of the bill be consistent with its objective of expanding access to nursery care and promoting greater female labor participation, without weakening effective protection against unemployment," added former minister Mario Marcel.
The main proposals of ChileMujeres:
- Financing: a contribution of 0.3%, instead of the 0.35% proposed, with no additional charge for employers. It would be compensated with 0.1% of the employer's contribution to the individual fund of the unemployment insurance, as had been established in the previous Government (not with the 0.2% established in the Executive's substitute amendment) and 0.2% of the contribution to the Solidarity Fund (not with 0.15% as established in the Executive's substitute amendment), in turn with an explicit commitment from the State to safeguard the sustainability of the latter. The Foundation warned that the financial report of June 2026 would overestimate the expected coverage by between 5,500 and 8,500 children.
- Public supply: restore the transfer of funds from the nursery care fund to Junji, Integra, and VTF establishments, for operation with extended hours during the day and continuous throughout the year. In the Executive's amendments, although public nurseries are included as part of the system, it does not contemplate resources for them from the nursery care fund.
- Equality before the law: that domestic workers and independent workers access the right from the first year of validity, just like dependent workers.
- Copayment: limit it to a maximum of 10% of the amount that the Fund transfers to the nurseries. In addition, that the Finance Ministry decree consider the report of the Technical Commission on Financing and Sustainability, to reinforce that the established value with geographic differences is the effective and reasonable one.
- Ownership of the right: return ownership of the right to mothers and fathers, since children cannot be subjects of labor relations regulated in the Labor Code. Reinforce the right that children have to be cared for and educated in nurseries through the following wording of Article 203, paragraph 1, of the Labor Code: "Workers may access nurseries to feed their children under two years of age, for their proper care and education while they are at work, under the conditions established by law and in this Code. The foregoing shall also apply to workers to whom a court ruling has granted the personal care of a child under two years of age."
- Reinforce the evaluation: that the Ministries of Finance, Labor, and Education evaluate the law two years after its implementation and two years after parents begin to exercise the right on a transitional basis (in the bill, actuarial studies and reports from the Technical Council on Financing and Sustainability are permanent).
- Good use of resources: suspend transfers in the event of unjustified and prolonged absence of children from the nurseries.