The NINI

The NINI: Neither study nor work?

In recent times, we have been talking about the "NINI", a concept that refers to young people between 15 and 29 years old who study NI or work in a paid way. It is a segment of the population that is excluded from the two main mechanisms of social integration, that is, education and employment.

According to data cited by ComunidadMujer (2017), Chile has a population of 4.2 million people between 15 and 29 years of age, of which 12.8% is in the NINI category. Of these, the ¾ parts are women, who come mostly from a vulnerable socioeconomic stratum. In the case of men, the main reasons why they are not studying or working is the lack of interest (17.7%) and health problems (14.6%), while in the case of women, they do not work in a remunerated way because they are dedicated to housework and care (33.5%) and to maternity or pregnancy (32.8%). In the same way, and closely linked to teenage pregnancy, women are more than twice as likely as men to be NINI.

In this same order of ideas, highlight the data collected by Rau (2012), where it appears that, with respect to the reasons why people of all ages, in general, do not work, men and women provide different justifications: men do not work because they study, they are sick or in a situation of disability, while women do not work for housework, because they have no one to leave their children with, or because they study.

Consequently, the young NINI do work, since they carry out an activity in the home, but that is not remunerated or developed in the formal labor market. And the time they work is considerable: according to the cited study of ComunidadMujer (2017), the NINI have an hourly load of 8.6 hours per day, the equivalent of an ordinary workday of 45 hours per week, without receiving remuneration and without breaks. , but above all, without recognition. The bias persists: it is said that NI does not study or work, in circumstances that do, but their work is invisible.