At UNRISD: We Care about Care

On the occasion of International Women's Day, UNRISD Senior Research Coordinator Francisco Cos-Montiel contributes this reflection on the crises of care and climate, and how feminist thinkers and activists can respond.

“The dynamics of care are receiving increasing attention from activists, researchers, and policy actors. While this may be in part a reflection of women’s greater political visibility and agency, there are also economic and social pressures underpinning academic and policy interest in this area”.

Sixteen years ago, UNRISD began its research on care with the project this quote is drawn from, at the time rather a lone actor in this field. The project undertook comparative research on the different sites where care takes place―whether in homes or in facilities operating on different modalities―their gender composition and dynamics, and the implications for poverty and social rights. One of the project’s most important contributions was Shahra Razavi’s conceptualization of the “care diamond” of the institutions involved in the provision of care: family/household, markets, the public sector, and the not-for-profit sector. Today the “care diamond” is an essential element of discussions on care policies.

But how far have we come in recent years in creating more awareness of the centrality of care? The answer is that we have come a long way. Care has made inroads in development and policy circles and UNRISD can be proud of how its early work influenced the inclusion of a specific target on Sustainable Development Goal 5 that relates directly to care. In recent years, there has been growing interest in the expansion of care services in many countries around the world. UNRISD’s previous research has provided concrete and innovative examples of care policies that can be replicated and scaled up in order to realize a transformative care agenda. In all regions we can find promising examples, but they come with their own challenges.

Exposing the crisis of care

Unfortunately, the pandemic has exacerbated recent and long-standing inequalities. Covid emerged within another metaphorical pandemic, that of neoliberalism. With a few exceptions, governments’ neoliberal policies did not prioritize public health with the catastrophic consequences we all know now. Diverse studies have also shown the terrible impact of the pandemic on women’s work and on care. The pandemic has exposed the limits of the neoliberal model for the survival of the human species.

UNRISD’s emerging work on Covid-19 distinguishes itself from other studies by also asking how women felt about the pandemic. Analysis of women’s subjective experience and agency has always been a concern of feminism, and going forward at UNRISD we want to cover women’s subjective experiences of their lives, which are as important as the material effects they experience. For instance, during Covid lockdowns there was an increase in remote working that, in many cases, coincided with home-based schooling, producing an emotional overload: children kept indoors all day resulted in anxiety, boredom, moments of aggression and tears, which in turn produced desperation and feelings of guilt among their primary carers, many of whom were women. To analyze how it felt To Live, Work, Care and Die in Times of Covid-19, UNRISD is producing four think pieces by eminent thinkers from Ibero-America. This mini-series reveals the unexpected leading role played by emotions, care work, people’s dependence on each other, and crucially the need for an intersectional perspective.

Changing masculinities?

As well as exposing the crisis of care and the fragility of institutions providing care services, the pandemic also confronted us with the fact that little progress has been made in sharing the responsibility for care more equitably between women and men. At UNRISD, we are convinced more than ever that it is fundamental to start working more seriously with men and masculinities. For instance, our Director Paul Ladd is an active International Gender Champion who has committed to make gender equality a working reality. Why work with men? Because while we have made important inroads in terms of legislation and policies, we have been less successful in changing culture. Cultural processes of change can be very slow, and we should think more seriously about men’s active involvement in the private sphere in terms of looking after children and doing an equal share of the domestic chores. We haven’t talked much about that in policy circles. We need to think about how we change the codes of masculinity and femininity and how we change men’s ideas about being the bold heroes in the workplace while cooking and other domestic work is for the weak or the unemployed. There are men who are willing to change but they need incentives and support in social discourse in order to feel legitimate. If we talk publicly about these mandates of the masculine and feminine, we will find that more people are shifting, changing.

This is why at UNRISD we are making efforts to publish our research in innovative ways, paying attention to social media and different communication channels with the aim of transforming culture. Thanks to a contribution from the Spanish Agency for Development Cooperation (AECID), we were able to support a documentary to raise awareness among young women of the importance of care, to help them understand its centrality in their own lives. We also hope it will have an impact on young men and boys. You can see the trailer here.

We also work closely with governments and others to ensure that our research is useful for policy. We have recently partnered with the government of Mexico, which leads the Global Alliance for Care , to assess the impact of three policy interventions―universal free quality childcare, extended school days for school-age children, and universal care for the elderly―to inform decision making. UNRISD’s research partner for the project is the Levy Economics Institute. The collaboration between these institutions will enhance the scope and quality of the research and increase the likelihood of the uptake of the research findings and recommendations into policies at local, national, regional, and international levels.

Caring for the environment

But why write about care when the International Women’s Day theme is “Gender equality today for a sustainable tomorrow”? For UNRISD, care is central to the environment, sustainability and life. In the documentary mentioned above, one of the young women wisely reminds us that “Care is a fundamental part of everything that is happening now with the environment and wildlife. You have to take care of yourself, you have to take care of the people around you, the place and the city you live in. Because in the end we all live on the same planet”. This is why at UNRISD two research programmes―on Gender Justice and on Environmental and Climate Justice―are working together with the conviction that taking care of ourselves, of other human beings, of other species and of our planet is fundamental to our survival and future as a human species.

Given all this, we have to wonder why, as societies, we have not taken immediate action to rectify the crises of care and climate change. Those who like literature know that in Homer’s Iliad, Princess Cassandra of Troy had the gift of prophecy, but also the curse that no one would ever believe her predictions. So when she announced the imminent fall of Troy, no one listened to her.

At times we have the feeling that in the face of the imminent crises of care and climate change, some powerful players are not listening either, so it is essential to identify the people who can act before it is too late. By sharing our research with our network of feminist thinkers and activists we can facilitate and sustain the action needed to care for our environment and human lives, especially in these difficult times when the spectre of war reminds us of the most important thing we have: our precious lives.

This is why at UNRISD, we care about care.

Photo: UN Women