In this Women’s History Month edition of Wilson Center NOW, Women’s Leadership: Efforts to Close the Gender Gap, John Milewski, Moderator of the Wilson Center NOW series, interviews Sarah Barnes, Project Director for the Wilson Center’s Maternal Health Initiative, and Samantha Karlin, Founder and CEO of Empower Global, a gender consulting firm that works with organizations to help them better recruit, retain, and advance women. They discuss feminist leadership, women in the think tank space, and the work remaining to achieve gender equality. The 2023 Women’s History Month theme is Women Who Tell Our Stories.

Migrant care work is a key component of the ongoing global care crisis. The global care economy is critical to overall economic growth, and also affects gender, racial, and class and caste equity and empowerment. Caregiving is also the fastest-growing economic sector in the world—projected to add 150 million jobs by 2030. Global societal changes, like low birth rates, demographic aging, and an increase in female labor force participation, are basic drivers of the continued growth of this sector. But because in many cultures care work is considered “instinctive” for women—a type of work not requiring skill—it has remained virtually invisible, unpaid or underpaid and unregulated. It is also often stigmatized, especially when relegated to already marginalized and underrepresented populations.

The COVID-19 pandemic has had far-reaching, negative impacts on health and well-being, particularly in population mental health. Mental health is strongly related to people’s social environment, and the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted this greatly. Many countries instituted shutdowns early in the pandemic restricting people’s movement both within and between countries. Shutdowns socially isolated people from one another and often led to poor mental health. The highest rates of mental distress occurred during time periods when COVID-19 mitigation measures were strictest and the number of COVID-19 related deaths was highest.

While the world’s population now approaches 8 billion people, global fertility rates have been declining for decades. The overall drivers of this decline include increased access to contraception and reproductive health care, an increase in women seeking higher education, women’s empowerment in the workforce, lower rates of child mortality globally, increased cost of raising children, and overall greater gender equality.

Care work makes all other work possible. It is also the fastest-growing sector of work in the world—projected to add 150 million jobs by 2030. The COVID-19 pandemic has amplified the importance of care work. It has also exposed how women perform most caregiving work, which is unpaid, underpaid, and/or undervalued. Globally, women and girls contribute more than 70 percent of total global caregiving hours (paid and unpaid) and perform more than 75 percent of unpaid care work. The inordinate amount of unpaid care work women and girls perform prevents them from earning a paid income, which contributes to greater gender inequities worldwide.