PRESENTED BY Dr. Laxmi Narayan

Assistant Professor of EconomicsGovt. P.G. College Mahendergarh)

Unpaid Care Work and Women Empowerment

What is care?

Taking care of others is what sustains our societies. ‘Care’ includes direct care of people, housework that facilitates caring for people (indirect care) and volunteer community care of people, and paid carers, cleaners, health and education workers.

Care has a widespread, long-term, positive impact on wellbeing and development.

Care is a social good, it strengthens all development progress. Markets depend on care for their functioning.

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What is Unpaid Care Work?

Unpaid because person doing the activity does not receive a wage for it.

The term ‘care’ stresses that activity provides what is necessary for the health, well-being, maintenance, and protection of others.

The word “work” indicates that the activity involves mental or physical effort and are costly in time and energy and are mostly undertaken as obligations (contractual or social).

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What’s the problem?

When care work is so central to human development and progress, then

WHAT IS THE PROBLEM

Care work is a problem BECAUSE!!!!!!!

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It is INVISIBLE: (In Policy, Research, Programming and Budgeting)

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It is UNEQUAL: A large part of unpaid care work is disproportionately

carried out by females.

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Gender Differences in Paid and Unpaid Work

5.9 hours per day

0.6 hours per day

Male-female ratio of unpaid care work is 0.102 in case of India

Overall also, time use survey found that women accounts for 52 percent of total hours worked where as men accounts for 48 percent.

When work is paid – men perform 64.4 percent of the work whereas women could get only 35.6 percent of it.

But When work is unpaid, the situation completely

reverse – men perform only 26.8 percent of it whereas women perform 73.1 percent of it.

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Gender Differences in Paid and Unpaid Work

It is a Problem

Because its CONSEQUENCES are detrimental to women health and well being

and Violets basic human rights of women and girls

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Causes and Consequences of Unpaid Care Work

Implications of Unpaid care work for Women Empowerment

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1. Unpaid care work is one of the important areas where progress would substantially reduce gender inequalities.

2. Unpaid care work is both cause and effect of gender inequalities.

3. It results into time poverty, poor health and well-being, limited mobility and perpetuation of women’s unequal status.

4. It undermines the rights of carers, limiting their opportunities, capabilities and choices and often restricting them to low-skilled, irregular or informal employment.

What is the solution?

How to reduce burden and value unpaid care work

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The 3Rs Approach (UN, 2009) Recognize: Recognise care work; Measure the value of

unpaid work. Reduce: Reduce inefficient and difficult tasks; reduce

the overall time spent by both men and women on unpaid work

Redistribute: Redistribute the share of unpaid work from women to men and also from family to state.

RECOGNISE

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What is not seen is not invested in or prioritized

Measure time use – time budget survey Value unpaid care work – opportunity

cost/replacement cost Raise awareness and build capacity – officials, staffs

and general public gender-responsive budget initiatives – Integrating

gender issues in budgeting.

REDUCE

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Investments in infrastructure and labour-saving technologies that are focused on household level care tasks could be effective in reducing the time women and girls spend on unpaid care work.

Improve task productivity – reduce strenuousness and inefficiency of tasks

Expand access to key infrastructure - improvements to rural water and irrigation systems, domestic energy, and rural transportation infrastructure investments.

Maintain/expand core public services: Expand, or during crisis, avoid, cutbacks to essential government services and infrastructure investments

REDISTRIBUTE

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Support equitable burden-sharing, not only within households (between women and men), but also between and among key providers such as governments, the private sector and communities.

Implement policies favourable to burden-sharing Expand access to health care Engage with men Promote the elimination of gender wage gaps

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Conclusions While much is known about the issue, getting care onto policy

agendas has been a challenge because it is marginalized in mainstream economic thinking, and because the women’s movement has failed to mobilize around this agenda.

Moving forward requires commitments from States as well as active social movements to ensure that resources are put behind the policies and investments that contribute to care.

UN 2030 agenda SDG5- Sub Target 5.4: Recognize and value unpaid care and domestic work through the provision of public services, infrastructure and social protection policies and the promotion of shared responsibility within the household and the family as nationally appropriate.

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