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Economy and Finance

Economy and Finance

What is Care Economy?

30 Jul 2023 Zinkpot 180
  1. Care economy is a system that consists of economic activities related to the physical, emotional, and psychological aspects of care, which is an integral, but undervalued component of the economies all over the world.
  2. It is the comprehensive system of economic activities related to care work. Care work encompasses direct activities such as feeding a baby or nursing a partner and indirect care activities such as cooking and cleaning.
  3. Care economy helps in promoting gender-inclusive economic growth. Women’s unpaid work is valued at 3.1% of GDP in India. Recognizing women’s care work as formal sector work will allow their economic contribution to be counted in the GDP.
  4. Women with care work responsibilities often take up flexible lower paid jobs to manage both professional work and care work. Investing in care infrastructure can thus prevent ‘occupational downgrading’.
  5. Greater investment in care services can create an additional 300 million jobs globally, many of which will be for women. In turn, this will help increase female labor force participation and advance Sustainable Development Goal number 8 which aims to promote inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment, and decent work for all.
  6. The International Labour Organisation proposes a 5R framework for decent care work centred around achieving gender equality.
  7. The framework urges the
    1. Recognition
    2. Reduction, and
    3. Redistribution of unpaid care work,
    4. promotes Rewarding care workers with more and decent work, and
    5. enables their Representation in social dialogue and collective bargaining.
  8. Investment in care work is also important to achieve a silver economy which is a term that includes all those economic activities, products, and services designed to meet the needs of people over 50.
  9. Children are the future of our country, and hence providing care to them should be the basic criteria for any government to achieve a prosperous economy. Childcare services came into the picture after females or mothers started participating in formal and informal jobs for helping the family income.
  10. Childcare must also be included in jobs so that caring should not be a gender-specific role in society and paid maternity and paternity leave is one such example for this.
  11. India provides 26 weeks of leave for new mothers as maternity leave, compared to the ILO’s baseline requirement of 14 weeks, which is enforced in 120 nations.
  12. While private sector employees are not subject to any formal policies, central government employees in India are granted 15 days of paternity leave.
     

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