According to the International Labour Organization (2018, xxix; hereafter ILO), women perform three-quarters of unpaid care work globally. Women who work in full time paid employment still do considerably more unpaid care work than men who work in full time paid employment. This disparity translates to a long-established double work burden for women, which includes the unpaid care work of reproduction, such as the caring for children, elderly, sick, and the severely disabled, cooking, cleaning, and other household tasks, alongside the work of production or for pay (Elson 2000). While there has been an increase in women’s participation in the labour market and men’s contributions to unpaid care work globally, the gender gap in unpaid care only declined by seven minutes across 23 countries between 1997 and 2012 (ILO 2018, xxx). The little progress in reducing the gender divide in unpaid care responsibilities calls into question the effectiveness of existing policy and services to address these disparities. There are obvious moral imperatives for policymakers to reduce this gender gap, but there are also economic incentives and potential tax contributions.
If women’s unpaid care work were translated to an hourly minimum wage, it would amount to 9% of global Gross Domestic Product or US$11 trillion (ILO 2018, xxix).
Through the feminist theoretical framing of a public ethics of care, this post briefly points to the ways that different types of care work largely performed by women is being grossly impacted by the pandemic. A summary of evidence from the United States (US), United Kingdom (UK) and Canada is provided because of the availability of new data. This post proposes a universal care system to respond to the global pandemic, reduce women’s care work burdens and promote gender justice in the longer term.
Public ethics of care
The term ‘unpaid care work’ is often used synonymously with ‘social reproduction’ or ‘non-market work’ (Folbre 2006). Unpaid care work includes a highly varied set of activities. Some literature defines care work based on activities that involve personal interactions. Others define unpaid care work based on the site of reproduction within the home (Folbre 2006). Yet, care work also exists within the paid economy, particularly employment that involves care provided within other people’s homes.
The feminist framings of care work come into conflict with liberal ideas underlying policy that are premised on individual rights and autonomous choices. Historically, mainstream political theory cast care work as the responsibility of individual women and not the public because of stereotypes that define women as ‘naturally caring’ (Leavy 2005). While there is no universal standard of care, there is the underlying understanding that individuals do not make autonomous choices but live in a web of interdependent relations that require care (Greenswag 2019).
A public ethics of care framing helps to centre care work in policy by disrupting the commonly held divides between public and private roles and by pointing to our interdependencies. This framing is overtly political, requiring that we advocate for changes by demonstrating the underlying structures that contribute to intersectional inequality, exploitation and injustice to promote non-exploitative care relations (Greenswag 2019). This political commitment requires context specific-responses and flexible, open ended policies. Sometimes responses require eliminating social differences so that individuals can equally make free choices. Other times responses require respecting and responding to these differences (Greenswag 2019; Leavy 2005). Overall, policy needs to enable good forms of diverse, care relations and remove the structures that lead to the perpetuation of harmful or exploitative ones (Greenswag 2019).
A need for a public ethics of care in policy is increasingly coming into focus under the global COVID-19 pandemic. With many people living at home under varying degrees of lockdown measures, this translates to less measurable paid work and economic activities. Yet, many of these activities, such as food preparation, childcare and education, among others are being transferred to the home, mainly to women for no compensation.
Care work under the global pandemic
With childcare facilities and schools closed, in addition to work from home orders to prevent the spread of COVID-19, many women have seen their double work burdens intensify. A recent study published by Adams-Prassl et al. (2020, 20) finds that during the pandemic from March to April 2020, women across the UK and US who were pursuing their paid employment from home, saw their care work increase, spending about one hour more on childcare and home schooling than men. Socially isolated single mothers who make up the majority of single parent families are likely in even more stressful situations because they are unable to access their community support.
Alongside gender stereotypes, women are generally taking on more childcare and homeschooling responsibilities than men in the pandemic because women are more likely to give up their paid work to fulfill unpaid care needs (Bertrand, Kamenica and Pan 2015). More women than men have also lost their paid work in the pandemic because of the precariousness of their employment. This career break phenomenon for women is a major underlying cause of the gender wage gap (Pelletier and Patterson 2019). With increasing demands on time due to childcare and homeschooling needs in a lockdown, men’s more secure and better compensated paid labour is often prioritized within heterosexual couples (Bertrand, Kamenica and Pan 2015). Leaving women to handle the reproductive tasks, which exacerbates the gender wage gap and unpaid labour burdens for women further. Care labour requires high amounts of time and mental energy, which are taxing for women and a frequent source of conflict amongst heterosexual couples (Daminger 2019). This conflict can translate to violence against women, which has also increased in the global pandemic.
While the gender divide in reproductive labour is highest in high-income earning households (Adams-Prassl et al. 2020), women who work in lower paying jobs, particularly women of colour and migrants, also face unique care work burdens and threats in the pandemic. COVID-19 has disrupted the perceived divide between paid and unpaid care work. Many of the economic activities performed disproportionally by migrants have been lost in the pandemic, such as in domestic care, accommodation and food retail sectors. For example, in Canada, employment for recent immigrants fell much more sharply from February to April 2020 (23.2%), than those who were born in Canada (14%). This employment loss is largely being transferred mainly to women in the home for no compensation.
Paid care work is performed largely by women and people of colour who are operating on the front lines of the pandemic, putting them at greatest risk of contracting the virus. Boniol et al. (2019) shows that women make up 67% of the health care workforce across 104 countries. One third of deaths related to COVID-19 in the US and 81% in Canada have been those in nursing or long-term care home residents and workers (Yourish et al. 2020). Workers in Canadian long-term care homes are predominantly women and and those who speak English as a second language (Song et al. 2020). In the UK, 61% of the total deaths due to COVID-19 are those from black and Asian backgrounds who work in long term and health care sectors (Marsh and McIntyre 2020; Williamson 2020) and at least half were not born in the UK (Cook, Kursumovic, and Lennane 2020; Rimmer 2020).
It is also worth noting that the LGBTQI community face unique care circumstances that have not been captured in current COVID-19 reporting. This community tends to rely more on their friendships and wider networks for care and support because of their experiences of discrimination and harassment by care service providers (Shiu, Muraco, and Fredriksen-Goldsen 2015; Willis, Ward, and Fish 2011). These interdependent relationships of care are also likely being disrupted due to lockdown measures. Yet, there is no reporting of these figures, so it is impossible to tell how and to what extent their care is compromised.
We need an inclusive universal care system
Since the COVID-19 pandemic has publicly revealed the essential but poorly protected and compensated care work largely carried out by women and minorities, this is a unique moment to advocate for a public ethics of care in policy. A care system should be universal and treated as a public good because there is a collective social responsibility to keep all people healthy, safe and cared for during vulnerable times in their lives, which everyone experiences to varying degrees. A universal care system could include health, child, elder and wider family care, including care for those with severe illnesses and disabilities. Care systems could also include social work, counselling and psychological services among others. As we see in public health, long term and daycare systems in Canada, greater government involvement in care service funding, provisioning and monitoring would provide better quality and more cost-efficient care to a greater number of people than private or mixed public-private systems (Baker, Gruber and Millian 2019; Kane and Kane 1985). Universal care also leads to more women earning income, which has obvious benefits for families, as well as the economy and tax contributions that would pay for a large proportion of care costs in the long run (Scarborough et al. 2020; Yates 2009).
Canada has had an expanded universal health care system that includes long term care for decades. Long term care is offered regardless of a person’s income in residential, nursing and community settings through mainly for-profit systems that are publicly subsidized. However, the COVID-19 pandemic has led to a catastrophe in Canada’s long-term care homes where there have been the highest numbers of deaths, particularly of women (Yourish et al. 2020). This catastrophe is due to weak enforcement of service standards associated with a largely for-profit system. Low wages, precarious employment and high levels of workplace violence, injury, poor sanitation and protection have made the Canadian long-term care system at greater risk of the pandemic (Mialkowski 2020). Instilling a fully public, decentralized system would be more efficient in maintaining higher quality care for long term needs and likely not lead to such catastrophic outcomes in a pandemic.
In the 1990s, the province of Quebec in Canada also established a universal $5 a day (now $7.30) child-care program (ages zero to four), which has led to a more widely accessible and better-quality child care service. The government of Quebec provides services regardless of a family’s income levels, including within mainly non-profit centres (for older children), as well as home-based care staffed by regulated providers (for younger children) (Brennan and Mahon 2011). This program led to a rise in the number of childcare centres, stricter requirements of formal qualifications for all caregivers and higher wage policies. The program also led to a very large increase in the use of these services, which reflects the reduced reliance on extended family and community networks (Baker, Gruber, and Milligan 2008) that tends to predominantly involve women carers for little compensation. It is also found that the care provided in this program is better than the quality of care in for-profit or unregulated care facilities in Quebec (Baker, Gruber, and Milligan 2019). The greatest benefits of the program over the long term, have been for children in low income and single parent families, as well as those in the bottom quintiles of test score distribution (Baker, Gruber, and Milligan 2019). Yet, there have also been some negative behavioural outcomes for children, as well as stress for families. Studies conclude that if this program could improve some of these negative impacts, it could lead to long term progressive outcomes for families and children. For example, Glass, Simon, and Anderson (2016) finds that across 22 OECD countries, paid time off and childcare subsidies are associated with fewer disparities in levels of happiness between parents with children and non-parents.
Even the most progressive policies and universal care systems available, however, have not necessarily led to equitable divisions of care work between women and men. There needs to be a greater incentive for men to take up care responsibilities, such as through the hiring of male employees in some of these care facilities.
A universal care system should also be more accommodating to a wider network of care relationships beyond the nuclear family that tends to predominate, which would be more inclusive of those in LGBTQI and immigrant communities (Shiu, Muraco, and Fredriksen-Goldsen 2015; Willis, Ward, and Fish 2011).
COVID-19 has brought to the front and centre women and minorities’ poorly compensated and protected contributions to essential paid and unpaid care work that is making them disproportionally vulnerable in the pandemic. Adhering to a feminist conceptualization of an ethics of care, there is a collective responsibility to ensure that everyone has access to safe, secure and adequate care at different stages of their lives that do not depend on exploiting women and minorities’ labour. A universal care system is one critical step towards realizing these goals both to cope with a pandemic, as well as in the longer term for transformative justice.
References
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