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New Global Health & Gender Policy Brief: Migrant Care Workers and Their Families
›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.
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New Global Health & Gender Policy Brief: The Global Care Economy
›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.
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The Lasting Effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Women’s Work, Health, and Safety (New Report)
›While the COVID-19 pandemic has affected the lives of many around the world, its effects on women have been particularly devastating. Even before the pandemic, women are highly affected by violence. Since the pandemic, rates of gender-based violence have risen, while uptake of critical health services have decreased. Women, especially low-income women, women of color, and migrant women, are also more likely to work in jobs that are underpaid, undervalued, and unprotected, and they comprise the majority of the frontline or “essential” workforce, which includes grocery and food retail workers, health care workers, and care workers.
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Caring for Those Who Give Care: How COVID-19 Created a Crisis for Caregivers
›“We’re always coping with a change,” said Denise Brown, Founder of the Caregiving Years Training Academy and a caregiver for her elderly parents. “And the change is often outside of our control.” She spoke at a recent event focused on the caregiving crisis, hosted by EMD Serono, the healthcare business of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany in the United States and Canada. When the doors to daycares, elder day residences, and adult care facilities closed at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, many Americans had to step into caregiving roles. “We’re doing our best to manage the change and keep going,” said Brown. “Because so many people rely on us and depend on us, we have to keep going.”
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The Care Economy is the Backbone of the Economy
›“Pandemic recovery plans cannot simply work to bring economies back to their pre-COVID status,” said Katrina Fotovat, Senior Official in the Office of Global Women’s Issues at the U.S. Department of State. She spoke at a recent event hosted by the Wilson Center’s Maternal Health Initiative and Middle East Project in collaboration with EMD Serono, the healthcare business of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, on recognizing women’s paid and unpaid work during COVID-19 recovery. Economic recovery plans must include the most undervalued industries and marginalized workers, especially women, she said.
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A New Generation of Family Caregivers Emerges During the Pandemic
›The population of unpaid family caregivers is shifting, and the pandemic has accelerated that change. One in five carers became caregivers for the first time during the pandemic, according to the Embracing Carers Global Carer Well Being Index®. A disproportionate share of these new carers were Gen Z or millennial (less than 38 years old). And 25 percent were caring for children and a sick/aging parent or grandparent.
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The Cost of Care: How the COVID-19 Pandemic Has Exacerbated the Baby Bust
›The decision to have a child usually requires a feeling of stability and confidence in the future, says Natascha Braumann, Director of Global Government and Public Affairs for Fertility at EMD Serono, on this week’s episode of Friday Podcasts. But with COVID-19, especially in the first months of the pandemic, there was no feeling of stability. “No one knew what was going to happen.”
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A Dangerous Dichotomy: Women’s Paid and Unpaid Work During COVID-19
›“While the global crisis has increased demand for research, such opportunities have created inequalities and distortion in the scientific community,” write the authors of a recent Social Science Research Network (SSRN) study that examines the gendered impact of COVID-19 in academia. The study finds that COVID-19 has disproportionately penalized the scientific productivity of female academics.
Showing posts from category caregiving.