Greater investment in care services can create an additional 300 million jobs globally, many of which will be for women. In turn this will help increase female labour force participation and advance Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 8 (which is to ‘promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all’).
Still ‘unseen’ by policy
Every year, March 8 is celebrated as International Women’s Day. The immense contribution of women to all spheres of life is often overlooked, unfairly valued, and hardly rewarded. This is ‘particularly evident in care work — both paid and unpaid, which is crucial to the future of decent work. Care work encompasses direct activities such as feeding a baby or nursing an ill partner, and indirect care activities such as cooking and cleaning’. Whether paid or unpaid, direct or indirect, care work is vital for human well-being and economies. Unpaid care work is linked to labour market inequalities, yet it has yet to receive adequate attention in policy formulation. Paid care workers, such as domestic workers and anganwadis in India, also struggle to access rights and entitlements as workers.
