The lack of consistent attention to gender was concerning, as was the failure to tackle the Global South debt crisis – and the blinkered expansion of private finance, despite evidence of its harms. But, says Rachel Noble, as the world turns to implementation of the Financing for Development commitments, there are valuable opportunities to seize and build on, including for the women who do most of the world’s care work.
Let’s build a collective movement to win economic justice for carers
Too many unpaid carers in the UK are struggling by on their own, unseen by policy makers. Taking inspiration from the union movement, says Hannah Webster of Care Full, it’s time to build the collective solidarity that can amplify our demands for an economy that values and supports us – and lifts carers out of poverty.
‘I have two jobs: one that keeps someone alive – and one that I get paid for.’
Unpaid carers like me save the NHS £119 billion a year, says Laura Barnes of the We Care Campaign – yet our rewards include burnout, poverty, never seeing friends and being pushed out of jobs. In the second blog in our series for Carers Week in the UK, she says it’s time to value what the millions of carers do: and that starts with tailored services, financial support, flexible work and access to respite.
This Carers Week, we need to talk about racial justice
While the needs of all unpaid carers in Scotland are often overlooked, people from Black and Minority Ethnic backgrounds are being especially failed. Margaret Chiwanza introduces new research that reveals how they are being pushed into poverty and struggling in silence. Addressing that, she says, demands measures co-created with communities from targeted support payments to respite breaks to health checks.
Austerity is creating fertile ground for the far-right: instead the UK must invest to fix its social infrastructure
The UK government needs to listen to Iceland’s progressive prime minister when she says robust welfare policies are the antidote to far-right extremism. And what’s more, investing in social infrastructure – in care, in health, in schools – is essential to driving the growth the government wants, says Amy Brooker of the Women’s Budget Group.
From Personal to Powerful: in the face of growing attacks on rights, states must hold the line for gender justice
Three decades after the landmark Beijing declaration to advance women’s rights, right-wing, religious, and conservative actors are reversing and obstructing hard-won progress. This International Women’s Day, our new Oxfam campaign calls on governments across the globe to reassert their commitment to gender justice, bodily autonomy and sexual and reproductive health and rights, say Lata Narayanaswamy and Amina Hersi.
Care work is real work: how can we make people and policy makers see that?
Daniela Oliveira pays tribute to the caring work of her own mother, “the minister for home affairs”, and sets out three ways to shift how the public and governments recognise and value the labour of care.
Global South feminists know how our fixation with GDP hurts people and planet: it’s time to listen to them
The world needs to stop relying on a metric that ignores two thirds of the work done by women and which promotes harmful policies, says Oxfam GB CEO Halima Begum. A new collection of feminist think pieces offers a compelling and inspirational tour of the arguments and pathways for moving Beyond GDP.
Want an economy that works for women? Keep care services public – and fund them properly
Deep cuts to public spending or abandoning provision to profit-making providers will not deliver the decent services millions of women so urgently need, say Myrah Nerine and Rachel Noble.
It’s time to put care at the centre of our economics courses
The UK government’s Francis Review of the English school curriculum is an unprecedented chance to shift the national and global conversation on economics education: let’s not miss it, say Alex Bush and Jennifer Brandsberg-Engelmann. They explain why we need to change an economics curriculum which perpetuates narratives that are bad for people and planet and erase care work.