The cascade of global crises over the recent years, including the COVID-19 pandemic, the ongoing climate crisis and the impacts of the conflict in Ukraine including rising inflation, have had devastating socio-economic impacts that are pushing the achievement of gender equality by 2030 further off track. Evidence is also emerging that post-pandemic recovery has not benefited men and women equally. The Secretary General has called on Member States to facilitate women’s economic inclusion, while recognising the need to rethink the care economy by valuing unpaid care work in economic models as well as through investments in quality paid care within public services and social protection.

Even before the pandemic women across the world bore the brunt of unpaid care work: in Latin America and the Caribbean, women dedicated on average three times more hours a week than men to domestic work and care activities; in the Asia-Pacific region, women bear the highest share of unpaid care and domestic work among all regions; while in Arab States it is indicated that women spend 4.7 times more on unpaid care tasks than men. Although SDG 5 calls for the recognition and appreciation of unpaid care and domestic work (Target 5.4 of SDG 5), time-use data is not collected systematically or periodically by all states, which would allow countries to measure and recognize unpaid work, and there is significant heterogeneity across the regions.

When services moved from the public to the private space during the pandemic, global attention focused on the care economy and the disproportionate responsibility of women and girls for unpaid care and domestic work. Member states have expressed a growing interest in the care economy in regional development agendas, as a catalyst for transformational growth and to promote more resilient and inclusive societies. There is a need to further improve data availability, institutional capacities and inter-sectoral coordination in order to establish effective care systems that put life at the centre.

This project supports six target countries across the Arab States, Asia-Pacific and Latin America and the Caribbean to gain new capacities for the design and implementation of care policies that recognize, reduce and redistribute unpaid care work, while rewarding and representing paid care work.