Wikigender would like to invite you to participate in this online discussion on “Addressing unpaid care in the post-2015 agenda” from 20-24 October 2014. We have the pleasure to have four experts on the issue of unpaid care for the duration of the online discussion.The four lead discussants are:
Participate from 9am (CEST) on 20/10 until 5pm on 24/10!
Background
Unpaid care work contributes to the well-being of individuals, families and societies. Every day individuals spend time cooking, cleaning, caring for children, the ill and the elderly. While important for our quality of life and for the economy, unpaid care is not sufficiently included in policy making and programming.
Women typically bear the bulk of caring responsibilities: on average they spend between two to ten times more on unpaid care than men. While unpaid care activities are central to our day-to-day well-being and essential to maintaining our societies, they are also time-consuming, and therefore limit women’s opportunities to: undertake further education; engage in skills building and networking; or have the same quality of jobs as men.
More recently, policymakers have been discussing unpaid care work issues at both national and international levels. The July 2014 Outcome Document of the Open Working Group on Sustainable Development Goals recognises and values unpaid care and domestic work under the fifth goal “Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls”. It calls for 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. It therefore appears that now is the right time to influence the post-2015 agenda by including these discussions.
In this context, the OECD Development Centre has produced a policy brief stressing the implications of gender imbalances in time devoted to unpaid care activities on gender gaps in labour outcomes. The policy brief “Unpaid Care Work: The Missing Link Explaining Gender Gaps in Labour Outcomes” (forthcoming) also links the unequal distribution of caring responsibilities between men and women with discriminatory social institutions, and provides some policy recommendations to lift the constraints on women’s time.
We would like to hear from you on this important issue that affects the whole society.
Guiding Questions
Key issues: What are the challenges for addressing unpaid care work? How can we better collect data on unpaid care work to strengthen advocacy efforts?
Public actions and commitments: What actions should governments, donors, UN bodies and civil society take to reduce and redistribute unpaid care work?
Regional examples: In your area/region, do you have examples of successful initiatives, campaigns or programmes that involve men in unpaid care work? Which approaches are the most effective in changing attitudes and practices?
We look forward to your participation! We strongly encourage you to disseminate news about the online discussion via your networks and on Twitter using #unpaidcare and #post2015 and the following link to this page: http://bit.ly/1yxLO3X
To participate, simply type your comment below or register directly via Disqus, Twitter or Facebook before typing your comment. Open for comments from 9am (CEST) on 20/10 until 5pm on 24/10.
To insert a URL hyperlink, make sure you shorten the URL first before posting it, otherwise it may not work. (e.g. using bitly, google url shorterner, tiny url…)
Anyone with an Internet connection is invited to participate in the discussion and we encourage you to express your views on this pressing issue. Please note however that comments will be moderated to ensure that there is no spam disrupting the discussion.
Problems to comment?
Please make sure your browser supports Javascript. Disqus is rendered correctly in all major web browsers, including Internet Explorer 9, Firefox, Chrome, Safari, and Opera. On mobile devices, Disqus currently only supports browsers using the WebKit layout engine.If you encounter any problem posting your comment, please email us at contact@wikigender.org and we will assist you.
