As mentioned in an earlier post, the UN and its member countries are preparing a World Summit for Social Development, to take place in November in Doha, 30 years after the original social summit (often referred to as the Copenhagen Summit).
The geopolitical situation has deteriorated palpably on all counts since then. But, we also need to appreciate that on the level of norms and commitments and awareness, there has been some progress in the past 30 years.
Therefore, it is disappointing that some of key policy demands and developments do not feature in the “zero draft” of the conference’s outcome declaration that countries’ delegations are currently working on in New York. One is that really we should be moving towards and eco-social summit, to factor in that any progress towards “social” (and economic) justice needs to address and redress the three planetary crises – destructive climate change, massive biodiversity loss and horrific pollution (more to follow).
Of many such insights that have evolved since the first social summit is the topic of care. Care work is central to the wellbeing of humankind and of the planet. For a forward-looking discussion – and some meaningful outcomes – in Qatar, we therefore must unpack the notion of care.
The zero draft briefly addresses care in connection with decent work (para II l) and with gender and women’s empowerment (gender section/point b). The text argues for formalizing work and notes the “multiplier effects” of care work; it also makes the case for equitable care work. This is certainly welcome, if we understand these points as support to improving care work in general, and as advocating for paid care work to adhere to all decent work standards and commitments.
However, at closer scrutiny, the concerned paragraphs reflect an economistic reasoning, instrumentalising care work for economic growth. Moreover, it de-politicises care: it does not address the relational, hierarchical dimensions of care. We know that migrant and racialised women provide much of the underpaid care work as they accept – insecure – employment in exploitative global care chains, leaving behind their own families and neglecting their self-care. We also know that in intra-household patriarchally gendered care patterns, women and girl children carry two to three times their share of the care workload, simplistically measured in work hours (ignoring foregone opportunities or even just the burden on their health).
Fundamentally, the Qatar summit declaration would need to integrate such evidence into a progressive notion of care and its argument for inclusive and rights-based eco-social development: how care ought to be understood, positioned, negotiated, and where applicable, remunerated.
Over the past 30 years since the Copenhagen summit, liberating, rights-based, potentially transformative understandings of care have emerged which, I would argue, need to be built into the prospective Qatar declaration. These newer understandings recognize the centrality of both paid and unpaid care work for human rights and eco-social and gender justice, for a rights-centred notion of the economy, as well as for “decent” work and social inclusion and to overcome poverty. These approaches address the gendered power hierarchies in paid and unpaid care work. They moreover contextualise care work with the principles and objectives of just transition and climate and environmental protection objectives.
Here are some examples for our readers’ and delegates’ consideration:
Academics , including in the UN, explored political economy dependencies in care work, highlighting the tensions between paid and unpaid work in industrialized and in low-income countries. Others developed the eco-social concept of the purple economy. As an alternative to austerity policies and to address business cycle recessions, this “purple”, feminist approach recommends promoting salaried care work in the public sector; it would create jobs that provide dignity to carers and those cared for, while reducing negative impacts on the environment as a share of employment transitions from the commodity resource-based manufacturing sector to the services sector. The purple economy would be (almost) carbon-neutral, save for the little energy required for household functioning and people’s mobility – which, by the way, differs between women and men.
The UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty highlighted the human rights dimensions of care work, illustrating how unequal care responsibilities often condemn women to poverty. The logical recommendation is for governments to improve women’s rights and their actual access to public services, care services and infrastructure. In the same vein, UN Women unpacked social policy and practice connections between care and public services, including the case for universal social protection throughout the life cycle to avoid child poverty and women’s poverty in old age.
Care work has also been conceptualized as an element of a new form of social contract. In connection with the ILO, the Global Coalition for Social Protection Floors posits care as a collective responsibility and call for “systemic transformations”, “to move away from the GDP growth narrative, and repurpose our economic systems and policy-making, so that the economy first serves the long-term wellbeing of people and the planet, and supports the work of caring for each other and for our natural environment.”
A further dimension of care as a collective responsibility is its role in situations of heightened political oppression, or outright conflict. In protest movements, activists are becoming more sensitive to and proactive in the need for and right to care, in some examples reconciling their activist roles with mutual solidarity in their care responsibilities.
As a globally-informedposition, bringing together actors and discourses from South and North, governments and civil society, the Global Alliance for Care has deepened the care concept to address intersectionality and gender identity, structural inequalities, climate and care, and progressive masculinities. It notes the need for self-care as well.
Beyond conceptual approaches, the past decades have developed concrete policy ideas and offer applied practice examples for the care economy. Most fundamentally, there are recommendations to adhere to decent work regulations with agreed work and leisure hours, paid leave, and the right to medical coverage and social security. There are calls to ratify and respect the ILO convention on domestic work and the ILO recommendation on the care economy. To support family-based unpaid care, policy demands include the availability of quality (day) care services for children, the elderly, and persons living with disabilities. For those in formal employment, demands – and some cases, practice – include paid, equitably-shared parental leave combined with job-return guarantees, and the imputing of care time into pension allowances. Such policies can integrate decent work as well as gender justice goals.
How could these approaches contribute to the pre-Summit discussions? Specifically, the zero draft could incorporate access to care and decent care work into its call to action, building on the care-related proposals of the UN Inter Agency Task Force in their synthesis papers on poverty, achieving full and productive employment and decent work, and social inclusion. One elegant step would be if the current discussion in New York could reinstate the sections on social policy and the social contract that had featured in the Food for Thought paper.
In the few remaining months until the Qatar summit, the forthcoming political declaration needs to evolve. Why does this matter? Why care about care?
There is the obvious normative merit – the universal human right to dignified care and care work. It can become the connecter between the three pillars of the summit – poverty eradication, decent work and social integration.
And there is also a pragmatic rationale: the WSSD operates in competition with numerous other multi-, plurilateral, thematic and regional summits. If it is to make a dent in global and national discourse, and if it purports to advance the SDGs and shape the next development platform post-2030, it needs to reflect the state of the art in terms of the care discourse. To move the needle for a transformative agenda, to bring together social development and eco-social justice, the summit in Qatar needs to step forward assertively for rights-based care and care work.
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Why care about care?
As mentioned in an earlier post, the UN and its member countries are preparing a World Summit for Social Development, to take place in November in Doha, 30 years after the original social summit (often referred to as the Copenhagen Summit).
The geopolitical situation has deteriorated palpably on all counts since then. But, we also need to appreciate that on the level of norms and commitments and awareness, there has been some progress in the past 30 years.
Therefore, it is disappointing that some of key policy demands and developments do not feature in the “zero draft” of the conference’s outcome declaration that countries’ delegations are currently working on in New York. One is that really we should be moving towards and eco-social summit, to factor in that any progress towards “social” (and economic) justice needs to address and redress the three planetary crises – destructive climate change, massive biodiversity loss and horrific pollution (more to follow).
Of many such insights that have evolved since the first social summit is the topic of care. Care work is central to the wellbeing of humankind and of the planet. For a forward-looking discussion – and some meaningful outcomes – in Qatar, we therefore must unpack the notion of care.
The zero draft briefly addresses care in connection with decent work (para II l) and with gender and women’s empowerment (gender section/point b). The text argues for formalizing work and notes the “multiplier effects” of care work; it also makes the case for equitable care work. This is certainly welcome, if we understand these points as support to improving care work in general, and as advocating for paid care work to adhere to all decent work standards and commitments.
However, at closer scrutiny, the concerned paragraphs reflect an economistic reasoning, instrumentalising care work for economic growth. Moreover, it de-politicises care: it does not address the relational, hierarchical dimensions of care. We know that migrant and racialised women provide much of the underpaid care work as they accept – insecure – employment in exploitative global care chains, leaving behind their own families and neglecting their self-care. We also know that in intra-household patriarchally gendered care patterns, women and girl children carry two to three times their share of the care workload, simplistically measured in work hours (ignoring foregone opportunities or even just the burden on their health).
Fundamentally, the Qatar summit declaration would need to integrate such evidence into a progressive notion of care and its argument for inclusive and rights-based eco-social development: how care ought to be understood, positioned, negotiated, and where applicable, remunerated.
Over the past 30 years since the Copenhagen summit, liberating, rights-based, potentially transformative understandings of care have emerged which, I would argue, need to be built into the prospective Qatar declaration. These newer understandings recognize the centrality of both paid and unpaid care work for human rights and eco-social and gender justice, for a rights-centred notion of the economy, as well as for “decent” work and social inclusion and to overcome poverty. These approaches address the gendered power hierarchies in paid and unpaid care work. They moreover contextualise care work with the principles and objectives of just transition and climate and environmental protection objectives.
Here are some examples for our readers’ and delegates’ consideration:
Academics , including in the UN, explored political economy dependencies in care work, highlighting the tensions between paid and unpaid work in industrialized and in low-income countries. Others developed the eco-social concept of the purple economy. As an alternative to austerity policies and to address business cycle recessions, this “purple”, feminist approach recommends promoting salaried care work in the public sector; it would create jobs that provide dignity to carers and those cared for, while reducing negative impacts on the environment as a share of employment transitions from the commodity resource-based manufacturing sector to the services sector. The purple economy would be (almost) carbon-neutral, save for the little energy required for household functioning and people’s mobility – which, by the way, differs between women and men.
The UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty highlighted the human rights dimensions of care work, illustrating how unequal care responsibilities often condemn women to poverty. The logical recommendation is for governments to improve women’s rights and their actual access to public services, care services and infrastructure. In the same vein, UN Women unpacked social policy and practice connections between care and public services, including the case for universal social protection throughout the life cycle to avoid child poverty and women’s poverty in old age.
Care work has also been conceptualized as an element of a new form of social contract. In connection with the ILO, the Global Coalition for Social Protection Floors posits care as a collective responsibility and call for “systemic transformations”, “to move away from the GDP growth narrative, and repurpose our economic systems and policy-making, so that the economy first serves the long-term wellbeing of people and the planet, and supports the work of caring for each other and for our natural environment.”
A further dimension of care as a collective responsibility is its role in situations of heightened political oppression, or outright conflict. In protest movements, activists are becoming more sensitive to and proactive in the need for and right to care, in some examples reconciling their activist roles with mutual solidarity in their care responsibilities.
As a globally-informedposition, bringing together actors and discourses from South and North, governments and civil society, the Global Alliance for Care has deepened the care concept to address intersectionality and gender identity, structural inequalities, climate and care, and progressive masculinities. It notes the need for self-care as well.
Beyond conceptual approaches, the past decades have developed concrete policy ideas and offer applied practice examples for the care economy. Most fundamentally, there are recommendations to adhere to decent work regulations with agreed work and leisure hours, paid leave, and the right to medical coverage and social security. There are calls to ratify and respect the ILO convention on domestic work and the ILO recommendation on the care economy. To support family-based unpaid care, policy demands include the availability of quality (day) care services for children, the elderly, and persons living with disabilities. For those in formal employment, demands – and some cases, practice – include paid, equitably-shared parental leave combined with job-return guarantees, and the imputing of care time into pension allowances. Such policies can integrate decent work as well as gender justice goals.
How could these approaches contribute to the pre-Summit discussions? Specifically, the zero draft could incorporate access to care and decent care work into its call to action, building on the care-related proposals of the UN Inter Agency Task Force in their synthesis papers on poverty, achieving full and productive employment and decent work, and social inclusion. One elegant step would be if the current discussion in New York could reinstate the sections on social policy and the social contract that had featured in the Food for Thought paper.
In the few remaining months until the Qatar summit, the forthcoming political declaration needs to evolve. Why does this matter? Why care about care?
There is the obvious normative merit – the universal human right to dignified care and care work. It can become the connecter between the three pillars of the summit – poverty eradication, decent work and social integration.
And there is also a pragmatic rationale: the WSSD operates in competition with numerous other multi-, plurilateral, thematic and regional summits. If it is to make a dent in global and national discourse, and if it purports to advance the SDGs and shape the next development platform post-2030, it needs to reflect the state of the art in terms of the care discourse. To move the needle for a transformative agenda, to bring together social development and eco-social justice, the summit in Qatar needs to step forward assertively for rights-based care and care work.
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