How to develop caring societies

This post is written by Alejandra Mora Mora, Executive Secretary of the Inter-American Commission of Women (CIM)

• The problem: The global care work crisis is an issue.
• Why it matters: Care work is one of the main obstacles to women's full economic autonomy.
• The solution: Generate public policies that address the care work crisis and install national care systems utilising the Inter-American Model Law on Care designed by the CIM.

Two years after the COVID-19 pandemic hit the world, our societies are facing the effects of the subsequent health and economic crises alongside the crisis in Ukraine, all of which have deepened structural problems that were present in our societies before this outbreak.

In particular, the excessive burden of unpaid work that falls on women, exacerbated by confinement measures and the reduction of their labour participation, highlights the importance of care work, placing it high on the list of priorities of the regional gender agenda.

The economic returns of this transformation and investment in care are evident: increased tax revenues, the generation of new jobs in the paid care sector, the formalisation of existing jobs and services, and the insertion of half of the population contributing to economic growth.

This historically invisible work constitutes a barrier to women's full participation in the labour market, given that between 71% and 86% of unremunerated caregiving work is performed by women who have an hourly workload that corresponds to a weekly workday. In addition, even when this work is paid, it is economically and socially undervalued, due to the gender stereotypes surrounding care work.

The Case for Care

Care sustains the economy, national productivity, development and daily life, and is indispensable for social wellbeing; however, it has traditionally fallen on women, and therefore must be re-conceptualised through the recognition, valuation and redistribution of care between actors such as the state, the private sector, communities and men.

Against this backdrop, the Inter-American Commission of Women (CIM) has carried out various actions to generate knowledge on the structural barriers to care, including the Model Inter-American Caregiving Law and its implementation guide, both of which are concrete tools for states that seek to recognise, value, redistribute, regulate and generate new forms of care and unpaid domestic work, as well as to make visible and acknowledge women’s historical contribution in this area.

Given the current scenarios, the challenges continue to be, on the one hand, to establish new gender pacts to move towards caring societies that position care as a fundamental public good where all actors are jointly responsible, and on the other hand, to position care as an economic and fiscal investment that allows women to participate in the labour market.

The economic returns of this transformation and investment in care are evident: increased tax revenues, the generation of new jobs in the paid care sector, the formalisation of existing jobs and services, and the insertion of half of the population contributing to economic growth.

In relation to social and cultural transformations surrounding care, there is certain resistance to change that persists both in individual men and in society as a whole. The steps we need to take are not simple ones, as they require overcoming historical stereotypes and discrimination in relation to the conventional roles assigned to women and men. These necessary changes also impact our fundamental concept of society by recognising the interdependence of people, which in turn breaks down the perception of self-reliance that only privileges the individual.

Undoubtedly, care is the structural axis of women's economic empowerment, countries' economic growth, cultural transformation towards co-responsibility and policies that care, and will be part of the new feminist wave that collectively builds a global project of equal, inclusive and sustainable development for post-COVID societies.

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(Image Credit: Unsplash)