Below you'll find a list of all posts that have been tagged as “Care work”
How should INGOs share power to work with others – and especially grassroots and community groups – to achieve a feminist economy that values all care work? Ridhi Kalaria and Silvia Galandini share insights from Oxfam’s influencing across the UK; from backing existing movements and investing in long-term change, to knowing when to step back. Illustrations by Sonaksha Iyengar.
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.
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.
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.
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.
After decades of delay, the move from burning fossil fuels to renewables is firmly underway – but the fairness of this unfolding transition is not inevitable. In fact, there is a real danger the world will simply swap one exploitative and unjust system for another. Natalie Shortall introduces a new Oxfam paper that calls on the UK to get wholeheartedly behind a “just transition”.
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.
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.
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.
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.