Policy Brief on the Revaluation of Care Work

Today we proudly announce the publication of our fourth policy brief ‘Unpaid Care: Revaluing Women’s Undervalued Labour’. The policy brief is authored by Alina Arslanova, Sara Maria Barbaglia, Nathan Collins, Joe Earnshaw, Ben Galbraith, Ollie Gee, James Mottram, Victoria Portnaia, Anita Sammarini, Franklin Vaci, and Jonathan Ziener. The inspiration came from the International Youth Conference 2022, was developed by Youth Fellow Anita Sammarini in IYTT working paper no. 4 ‘Towards a New Economic Model Valuing Women and Natural Resources: Decomposing Orthodox Economics by De-Growth and Feminist Economic Theory’ and expanded by a survey of our Youth Panel.

Care work is vital to our lives and yet its importance has been brushed aside. Our 6 proposals to revalue unpaid care work aim to address the social inequalities that developed from the gendered expectation of care work and to give a voice and representation to that societally important group. Our proposals work as a comprehensive 6-step process. However, implementing any one of them would see a marked improvement in the lives of those who dedicate their time and lives to care. Our 6 proposals are: Invest in social services; Unionise care workers to give them a voice; Pay care workers fairly; Regulate working conditions; Improve the availability of paternal leave and Educate citizens on the importance of the inequality present in care work. By combining top-down and bottom-up measures, large and meaningful changes can be made with the goal of revaluing care work as something more important than simply a contribution to GDP. To undervalue care is to undervalue humanity itself and our proposals will make sure that never happens.

Our research on unpaid care work confirms that women overwhelmingly take on the burden of care work, whether for children or the elderly, whilst also having to work in order to earn. This phenomenon is known as the ‘double burden problem’. 91% of our Youth Panel agreed that some people do more unpaid care work than others because of deeply ingrained gender roles and expectations, some even underlined that spending more time as a care worker can often be driven by an inability to pay for professional care. These inequalities are seen by 58% of youth panellists as a threat to democratic rights because of the associated stress and underpayment. The lack of attention paid to these issues was also highlighted as a key problem; male politicians have displayed over and over that they are unwilling to address this inequality – our youth panellists notice this and think something needs to change. We cannot expect people to engage with society if they are ignored by it – that is the threat to democracy that we hope to address.

The policy brief has been made available on the International Youth Think Tank website here. We wish to extend the warmest thanks to the dedicated and enthusiastic Youth Fellows, and all that contributed to the policy brief, who have graciously borne the responsibility for the development and completion of these innovative and far-reaching ideas on democracy and inequality.