Today’s International Day of Care and Support puts a welcome spotlight on the importance of care in all its forms. Care weaves through every stage of our lives - nurturing our children into adulthood, supporting us through illness, and providing dignity as we age. It's not just essential - it's the foundation that allows our society and economy to flourish. As such, it is a global public good and a human right – meaning everyone in need of care should have the right to receive it, and supporting this basic human need should be at the heart of how we build our economy.
But no country in the world is yet to fully realise the potential of investing in a caring economy – where state-led investment provides the services and support for quality, accessible and affordable care. So, in its place, women and girls step in to fill the void, performing 3 times as much unpaid care work than men and boys, keeping our communities running and our economies afloat. Governments rely on this invisible unrewarded work, and women and girls pay the price: giving up their time, choices, and potential.
Poor investment in care is one of the most significant barriers to women and girls fully realising their economic opportunities and rights. Not only is this a deep, structural form of gender discrimination, it’s a missed opportunity for governments to capitalise on one of the fastest growing sectors globally. Large-scale investments in the care economy - including into care policies, care work and social protection - are estimated to create 300 million new jobs by 2035, with every dollar invested producing almost four dollars in returns to global GDP.
Shifting the narrative
It's high time we shift the narrative away from documenting women’s under-representation in labour markets, to putting the onus on the governments for under-investing in public-sector care. Governments like the UK can support a transformative shift by putting contributions towards care, social services and social protection as a cornerstone of UK policy and Overseas Development Aid contributions (ODA). Governments have the potential to transform patriarchal economies by making investments that open up access to care, social services, legal and social protections, especially for unpaid carers, women entrepreneurs and informal workers who have been historically under-valued and overlooked.
CARE International and Cherie Blair Foundation for Women’s report on “Building caring economies as a pathway to economic and gender justice” (available in English, French, Spanish and Arabic) shows how governments can accelerate action and realise the potential of a caring economy that fosters gender equality globally. Learning from the experiences of women entrepreneurs in Vietnam, Kenya, and within the UK, it provides practical solutions on how to invest, in line with the feminist concept of the “5Rs” of Recognising, Reducing, Redistributing, Representing and Rewarding care work and care workers.
Recommendations for building caring economies
Expanding quality care provision relies on strong public investments. Decision makers - including governments, donors, multilateral agencies and the private sector – have a unique opportunity to foster gender equality and should build caring economies by:
- Recognising care as a right, and care provision as a global public good, and committing to building caring economies by addressing the “5 Rs” of Recognition, Reduction, Redistribution, Representation and Reward for care work.
- Investing at least 10% of domestic public income in quality, accessible and affordable care services and increasing ODA for care, social services and social protection.
- Expanding quality care provision, including through a context-appropriate mixture of public care provision, social enterprise and community-led models towards universal, free, public care provision.
- Advancing care interventions to meet all caring needs (including care for disabled people, the elderly and children) to address the hidden inequities in care.
- Addressing gender-discriminatory norms through dialogues with households, reframed care narratives, gender-equitable legislation and by redistributing care work more equally between women and men, including through increased provision and investment in care.
- Fostering economic transformation towards gender-equitable and caring economies, by putting in place laws and regulations that provide unpaid carers, women entrepreneurs and informal workers with increased access to care, social services, and legal and social protections.
As the anniversary of the Beijing Declaration for advancing gender equality is just around the corner, it is almost certain that we have fallen far short of the ambition’s leaders signed up to at its historic conception 30 year ago. Rather than looking backwards, we need governments to seize the momentum to transform economies to deliver for women and girls. Building a caring economy isn't just one solution - it's the foundation for meaningful progress on gender equality.
