Why Care Work Should Not Be Invisible In Our Economic Life?

Imagine cancelling your plans and spending an entire day at home, taking care of all the family members, doing all the household chores, and the moment you decided to take a rest someone just comes in front of you and gives you more tasks. Leave alone the thought of any monetary award, you don't even get the due recognition for all the work you completed. How would you feel? If not angry, there is a high chance of you being upset, right?

Well, this is exactly what our economic policies do. And not with one or two people but with a very large proportion of the population that actively participate in care work. Ever since the world has learned to apply economics in real life, it has always focused on monetary gains and growing numbers, valuing only those activities which either raised the income levels of the population or fulfilled what were deemed to be money requirements of the country.

But what about the well-being of that very population? Who is responsible for that? What is a country without its people? And what are people without their well-being?

According to International Labour Organisation (ILO) care work “consists of activities and relations involved in meeting the physical, psychological and emotional needs of adults and children, old and young, frail and able-bodied. Care workers include a wide range of workers from university professors, doctors and dentists at one end of the spectrum, to childcare workers and personal care workers at the other. Care workers also include domestic workers.”

Care work forms the foundation of a country. Me, you, and the entire existence on this planet need care unless you are an extraterristrial being. Care work is not only imperative from an economic growth perspective but also from social growth. Care work includes those activities which sustain life on this planet yet it remains to be highly ignored in the economic policy structure of all the countries including ours. Why is it so?

Suggested Reading: It’s Time To Talk About Paying Women For Housework?

Why Is Care Work Invisible?

The first reason is the usage of Gross Domestic Product as the certified economic indicator. Our economists and policymakers rely on GDP for measuring the economic worth of the country but GDP does not take the unpaid activities into account even if they contribute to economy, not in terms of money but in terms of value addition. A major portion of care activities is unpaid or highly underpaid which implies that inclusion of care work is out of the question.

There have been a lot of debates and discussions over this, but we have failed to find a solution for it.   This further puts forth the question, "Is being source of physical, psychological and emotional support to another human being is of no use?" When we are not valuing the social well being of population then what is the use of creating these vast economies. The invisibility of care work in economic structure of the world is concerning.

Morover, care work include way many people to be so easily ignored by the economic world. And a large proportion of this population is women which adds up to the concerns of increment in prevailing gender-gap, especially in India. Women perform 76.2 per cent of the total amount of unpaid care work, 3.2 times more time than men (ILO).

This also supports the reason as to why women are still so highly engaged in unpaid or unorganized sector. Household chores are the biggest form of care work but regardless of how much value they add up to a nation’s daily life they remain to be treated as nothing more than tasks carried out of obligations and choice. And thanks to patriarchy along with stigmatized social structure of society, the burden of these tasks fall more or less on women. How do we call ourselves to be working towards gender equality when recognition and acknowledgement of women’s efforts, still a far cry?

The due invisibility of care work is also worrying because this sector holds high potential in terms of providing employment to people. The sector already employs large population of women and once accompanied by right policy interventions and required investments, there is so much heights that it can achieve.

According to the report published by ILO ‘doubling investment in the care economy, can lead to a total of 475 million jobs by 2030, meaning 269 million new jobs’. India is an ageing country and in near future would require essential care support for its people therefore it is high time we start taking care economy seriously.

Albert Einstein once said "We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them." Then how can we expect that the use of limited and distorted measures, that we have been using since a long time. would help us in analysing unprecedented social and economical challenges. Care sector have been frequently used as a back up option that our capitalistic world can fall back to when things dont go right. It has always been part of our very being but just not acknowledged and recognised.

However if we wish to live in a world where life matters and, equity and equality are respected, we better start caring for the care work.

The views expressed are the author's own