Cherishing all equally 2020 : inequality and the care economy

Abstract

Like many other crises before, Covid-19 has put a disproportionate burden on women. The gender aspect of the pandemic is indeed an important issue for analysis as well as policy. While men are more likely to die from the coronavirus, women represent the majority of the so-called essential workers and they have borne the disproportionate impact of unpaid care at home. Gender inequality in the world of work is not new, and it is a multidimensional phenomenon. Care work, which is in the focus of this study, has long been undervalued, underpaid and oftentimes invisible. And while women account for 70% of paid care workers (according to ILO), women spend on average 3.2 times more hours with unpaid care than men. In reality, both men and women desire to do less paid work and devote more time to their families, with men desiring to allocate more time to paid work than women. And while the Covid-19 emergency necessitated a reduction of economic activity overall, it has not reduced the need for care services. This has to be taken into account when social scientists but also progressive political leaders engage in designing schemes for the coordinated reduction of working time. Population ageing in recent decades has generated growing demand for health care services and it has also given rise to a care economy. The paradox of the latter is that while it contributes to reducing the gender employment gap, it does not necessarily reduce the gender pay gap due to the intense feminisation of the sector as well as the tendencies of highly precarious employment conditions. Care work has been poorly paid for many reasons. As a time- and labour-intensive face-to-face service it does not lend itself to productivity increases, the basis for higher wages. So long as care is commodified, then, pay and conditions will be poor. And while the salary level of care workers tends to be low, care services are often unaffordable, which leads to reliance on informal and migrant labour. Privatisation is often offered as a solution, but it is a false one that presents selection according to income categories packaged as consumer choice. The pandemic propelled the European Union to recognise the need to incorporate a Health Union in the broader EU architecture, by developing competences and capacities to enhance the resilience of health care systems and set common standards. Similarly, the EU also needs to seriously start working on care, in the context of social investment in particular. This would help generate the necessary paradigm shift towards an economy based on well-being and on inclusive growth. ...