ID S EVIDENCE REPORT No 157 Empowerment of Women and Girls ‘Who Cares’: Reflections on the Internationallevel Advocacy Work of the Unpaid Care Work Programme (2012–2015) Zahrah Nesbitt-Ahmed and Deepta Chopra October 2015 The IDS programme on Strengthening Evidence-based Policy works across seven key themes. Each theme works with partner institutions to co-construct policy-relevant knowledge and engage in policy-influencing processes. This material has been developed under the Empowerment of Women and Girls theme. The material has been funded by UK aid from the UK Government, however the views expressed do not necessarily reflect the UK Government’s official policies. AG Level 2 Output ID: 79 ‘WHO CARES’: REFLECTIONS ON THE INTERNATIONAL-LEVEL ADVOCACY WORK OF THE UNPAID CARE WORK PROGRAMME (2012–2015) Zahrah Nesbitt-Ahmed and Deepta Chopra October 2015 This is an Open Access publication distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are clearly credited. First published by the Institute of Development Studies in October 2015 © Institute of Development Studies 2015 IDS is a charitable company limited by guarantee and registered in England (No. 877338). Source: Image from the IDS animation ‘Who Cares’ (IDS 2013). 1 Contents Abbreviations Introduction 3 4 1 Unpaid care work and the economic empowerment of women and girls 5 2 International-level advocacy work 2.1 A three-part strategy 2.1.1 Strategy 1: ‘discourse saturation’ 2.1.2 Strategy 2: global advocacy events 2.1.3 Strategy 3: ensuring visibility of our work: Interactions website 2.2 The importance of partnerships 2.3 Alliance building 2.4 Achievements to date 7 7 7 10 14 16 17 19 3 What works, challenges and key lessons learnt 3.1 What works? 3.2 Challenges 3.3 Key lessons learnt 21 21 22 23 4 Future directions 25 References 26 Figures Figure 2.1 Figure 2.2 Tables Table 2.1 Unpaid care work on IDS Interactions website IDS Interactions Live at the global care advocacy workshop, 2015, in Bangkok, Thailand Invisibility on social protection and early childhood development policies 15 16 9 2 Abbreviations AAI ADB AG APWLD CSW DFID ECD GPS GrOW IDS ILO ITUC MDG NGO SDG SIDA UN UNSR WHO ActionAid International Asian Development Bank Accountable Grant Asia Pacific Forum on Women, Law and Development Commission on the Status of Women Department for International Development early childhood development Gender, Power and Sexuality Growth and Economic Opportunities for Women Institute of Development Studies International Labour Organization International Trade Union Confederation Millennium Development Goal non-governmental organisation Sustainable Development Goal Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency United Nations United Nations Special Rapporteur World Health Organization 3 Introduction At the end of September 2015, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) will be launched. Building on the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which were officially established in 2000, the SDGs will potentially have 17 goals – one of which was explicitly absent from the MDGs: the unpaid care work of women and girls. The inclusion of unpaid care work in the final outcome document of the Open Working Group on Sustainable Development Goals, which was made possible through the collective efforts of researchers, women’s rights organisations, activists and supportive policymakers, reveals just one of the ways in which unpaid care work is increasingly, albeit slowly, being recognised in development discourse, programmes and policies (United Nations General Assembly 2014b). In this Evidence Report we outline the global-level advocacy work undertaken by the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) and our partner, ActionAid International, over the course of a four-year programme to make care visible. Following on from this introduction, Section 1 explores the concept of unpaid care work and how it is linked to the economic empowerment of women and girls, with Section 2 looking at the strategies we have adopted to make care visible at the international level. Section 3 then looks at the successes and challenges, as well as key lessons learnt, while Section 4 discusses future directions for the Unpaid Care Work programme at global levels. 4 1 Unpaid care work and the economic empowerment of women and girls Unpaid care work, defined here as the activities that go towards meeting the material, developmental, emotional and spiritual needs of other people through direct and indirect personal relationships, is relevant to almost all aspects of gender equality and is directly linked to the economic empowerment of women and girls. Care is a cross-cutting issue with relevance to multiple areas of development, including human rights, education, decent work, social protection, health, nutrition and economic growth. While there is a large and robust body of evidence, particularly from feminist economists, about the extent of unpaid care work that women and girls do and its contributions to both the economy and human development outcomes, there has so far been a reluctance to engage with care issues, and specifically to use the evidence to inform public policy. With this in mind, we set about exploring the political economy conditions under which policy actors recognise or ignore the significance of unpaid care work – where, why, when and how unpaid care concerns become more visible on national and international policy agendas. This forms part of our four-year Department for International Development (DFID)-funded Accountable Grant (AG) programme on Influencing Policies to Support the Empowerment of Women and Girls, under the Economic Empowerment of Women and Girls sub-theme. In the early discussions of our work, we recognised the critical link between unpaid care work and economic empowerment of women and girls. For example, the socially prescribed and entrenched gender roles that denote women and girls as primarily responsible for providing care often mean that women will generally work longer hours than men (their paid work and unpaid care work combined), and are likely to either not be in paid employment or be pushed into flexible, low-skilled and low-paid, informal work that accommodates care responsibilities, including the direct care of dependants and the necessary ancillary activities (cooking, cleaning, fetching water, procuring food) (Kabeer, Mahmud and Tasneem 2011). The interactions between the market and the household and the consequences of unpaid care work also impact on the type, location and nature of paid work that women and girls can undertake, thereby impacting their economic empowerment (Chopra 2015). Furthermore, due to the sheer amount of time and energy taken to perform unpaid care work, women and girls may have less time for further education or training opportunities than men, or may not be in a position to make the networks and contacts that might also enhance their chances of better paid work. The time-consuming and arduous nature of unpaid care work often means that women are unable to enjoy their right to rest and leisure. However, despite these multifarious and multi-directional connections, issues of unpaid care work remain invisible – and this formed the basis of our work. Our research takes an approach informed by feminist political economy to understand the processes and factors involved in gaining greater visibility for unpaid care concerns in national policy agendas. This requires looking not just at institutions, interests, actors and incentives, but also at the interactions between gendered ideas, discourses and actors involved in the construction, implementation and evaluation of policy. We are using an action learning methodology to look at what works and does not work in making the care economy visible to policy actors at national and international levels. At the national level, we are working with partners in four countries – Kenya, Nepal, Nigeria and Uganda – targeting selected policy actors in these countries, including government departments such as Ministries of Finance, Economy and Planning and line ministries such as Health and Education. These actors will be introduced to existing evidence and findings 5 from participatory field studies undertaken by ActionAid and their local partners’ ‘reflect circles’. Our previous national-level advocacy progress reports can be found on the IDS Interactions website (Interactions 2015). In addition, we have been trying to influence global actors, both directly and through our partnerships with ActionAid International (AAI), so that they recognise and seek to address the connections between the market and the largely invisible care economy. We have been able to establish a new partnership with Oxfam, which has proved to be very beneficial for our work. This report details both the process and the activities undertaken through this new partnership. As we enter the final year of this four-year programme, this progress report is an opportunity to reflect on the international-level work done so far – what have we achieved, what challenges did we face along the way, and where do we go from here? Section 2 begins by looking at our three-part strategy to making care visible before exploring the importance of partnerships and alliance building in this work. 6 2 International-level advocacy work 2.1 A three-part strategy Our international-level work adopted a three-part strategy. This entailed a ‘discourse saturation’ strategy, organising annual global advocacy workshops and setting up the IDS Interactions website as a ‘go-to site’ for unpaid care work. 2.1.1 Strategy 1: ‘discourse saturation’ One key part of our international-level advocacy work has been to adopt a ‘discourse saturation’ strategy, seeking out and exploiting opportunities to introduce the significance of unpaid care into global development discourse wherever possible. We highlighted the significance or neglect of care in aid organisational documents that we reviewed as part of our regular work; brought considerations of care to programmatic evaluations and reviews of aid programmes and projects; raised the issues in meetings and conferences at which target audiences were present; and published papers and blogs in which care was connected to a wide range of development issues and practices. Through using this ‘discourse saturation’ strategy, we have had some success in orienting policy and practice debates to pay more attention to unpaid care work. One way that we have done this is through participating in e-discussions and webinars as a way to raise the visibility of care in relation to issues and debates that are more usually care-blind. This includes an online discussion on the care economy in November 2012 that was facilitated via the Eldis Communities platform. The online discussion, which had 23 participants from research/academia, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and donor bodies, enabled us to gain a better understanding of the challenges in getting unpaid care onto the development agenda – such as the development practitioner’s inability to see unpaid work as significant and important to development, and the implicit value of paid work and rational self-interest which undermines understanding of care. The discussion also identified windows of opportunity to bring unpaid care into the centre of debates, such as those offered by discussions on the post-2015 development framework. IDS, AAI and Oxfam GB also moderated a session on actions to recognise, reduce and redistribute rural women’s unpaid care work as part of the United Nations (UN) Women’s thematic webinar series on women’s economic empowerment. This session brought together guest speakers from each institution to explore what care is and what the problem is; how care can be linked with women’s rights and human rights; policy asks and strategies for recognition, reduction, redistribution and representation; and the different ways of working with communities and advocacy. Finally, we were lead discussants on a Wikigender forum on unpaid care work in the post-2015 agenda. We have also been invited to attend, participate, and in most cases, speak about unpaid care work in different spaces. These include: the Women for Women International policy conference with the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development on ‘Bridging the Gap – The Gender Impact of the Rule of Law and its Application’; a talk on emerging concerns in gender equality and care work fields and the gaps of public policy in addressing care issues, at the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development event on New Directions in Social Policy; a presentation at the Clean Cooking Conference organised by the World Health Organization (WHO), Britain’s DFID and The Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves to present on the impacts of cooking with solid fuels on the health, safety and economic opportunities of women and girls; a keynote speech on ‘Unpaid Care Work and Girls’ Economic Empowerment’ at the 2014 international colloquium ‘Childhood in Feminine: Girls’ at the University of Barcelona, Spain, as well as a forthcoming chapter in an edited volume from the conferment; and the Asian 7 Development Bank’s (ADB) regional seminar on Women’s Employment, Entrepreneurship and Economic Empowerment, 20–22 May 2015, Bangkok, Thailand. Being invited to speak at spaces not normally linked with unpaid care work has been quite crucial in making care visible. The 2014 Clean Cooking Conference, for instance, was attended by academics, energy specialists, Members of Parliament, organisations working on energy and technology (for example, HEDON and Practical Action), DFID and WHO representatives. IDS’ participation in the conference stemmed from our DFID policy lead, Magdalene Lagu, suggesting the convenor of the project as a presenter for the session based on the work IDS has been doing on care and women’s economic empowerment. The presentation itself was well received and comments from the audience suggested that it offered a new framing of the issues surrounding clean cooking and solid fuels – a different perspective beyond the energy one. Not many people had explicitly thought about what care had to do with clean energy. Other positive aspects of the presentation that were well received included the focus on unpaid care work; on not only cooking and collecting firewood but also the collecting of water; addressing the impacts on women and girls beyond health to also include impacts on their right to leisure and decent work; as well as the links between fetching fuel and water and the risk of gender-based violence. Similarly, being invited to speak at the ADB seminar is another highlight, as ADB was particularly interested in understanding how its projects and programmes can better address unpaid care work. While women’s unpaid care work is not a specific ADB programme area, reducing gender disparities in labour markets and enhancing women’s productivity, employment, entrepreneurship and economic empowerment are. As such, the dedicated unpaid care work session at the regional seminar – which focuses on women’s employment, entrepreneurship and empowerment – indicates that ADB recognises that unpaid care work significantly impacts on women’s time, education/skills-building and ability to take advantage of available economic opportunities. The session also provided an opportunity to share evidence on the impacts of unpaid care work on women’s economic empowerment and any promising policy reforms or public/private strategies in integrating women’s unpaid care work into labour market, employment or social protection programmes and policies that could be useful for the Asia Pacific region or elsewhere. Our work led us to be invited to join the expert review panel for the first ever State of the World’s Fathers (SOWF) report, launched in June 2015 (Levtov et al. 2015). SOWF highlights data, policies, programmes and research related to men’s participation in caregiving and fatherhood and defines a global advocacy agenda for involving men and boys as part of the solution to achieve gender equality and positive outcomes in the lives of women, children, and men themselves. IDS reviewed a draft chapter on caregiving, time-use, and related policies for this report. Finally, we have been invited to academic spaces, such as participating at a seminar at the University of Warwick in March 2015 that brought together scholars who work on issues of social reproduction and care within global North and South contexts to share experiences and to consider the extent to which, and the ways in which, lessons can be learnt from each other. Through the links made in this seminar, we were able to bring together feminist economists and activists to organise a panel on economic empowerment, care and social reproduction at the 2015 International Association for Feminist Economics (IAFFE) conference. We will also be presenting at the University of East Anglia International Conference on Gender Relations and Increasing Inequality in July 2015. Our paper will be on ‘conceptualising women’s economic empowerment: the importance of care’. Our ‘discourse saturation’ strategy also extends to publishing journal articles, Working Papers and blogs on various topics related to care. One of the very first outputs of the programme was a thematic literature review that we conducted, identifying cases of 8 successful policies around social protection and early childhood development. For our programme, a successful policy is one that incorporates unpaid care into its aims, design, implementation and evaluation. The main findings of the research point to significant invisibility of unpaid care concerns in public policy in the two sectors examined (see Chopra, Kelbert and Iyer 2013). As indicated in Table 2.1 below, only a very small proportion of policies – 23 out of 107 social protection and 41 out of 270 early childhood development (ECD) – expressed an intent to address unpaid care concerns; and among those that did recognise care, the main focus was on redistributing care responsibilities from the family to the state (to allow women to enter into paid work). Table 2.1 Invisibility on social protection and early childhood development policies Number of policies reviewed Number of policies that have a care intent Number of countries that these policies were from Social protection 107 23 (21%) 16 (out of 53) – sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America Early childhood development 270 41 (15%) 33 (out of 142) – sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America Source: Authors’ own, based on data drawn from Chopra et al. (2013). In order to share the processes through which our partners were endeavouring to give work on care visibility, we co-wrote a journal article, Policy Advocacy for Women’s Unpaid Care Work: Comparing Approaches and Strategies in Nepal and Nigeria, for Gender & Development’s special issue on care (Chopra et al. 2015). We have also authored and produced the Policy Briefings Towards Gender Equality with Care-sensitive Social Protection (Chopra 2014a) and Connecting Unpaid Care Work and Childhood Development for Gains in Women and Children’s Rights (Chopra 2014b), which provide guidance and advice on strategies to make care more visible in social protection and ECD policies. Another Policy Briefing, Gender-Equitable Public Investment: How Time-Use Surveys Can Help (Fontana 2014), explores the role time-use data can play in guiding more equitable allocations of public resources and promoting government budget priorities that recognise the importance of unpaid care work. In making care visible, it is also important to recognise the strong links between the amount of time that women and girls spend on unpaid care work and their economic empowerment, as revealed in another Policy Briefing, Balancing Paid Work and Unpaid Care Work to Achieve Women’s Economic Empowerment (Chopra 2015). This briefing looks at the interactions between the market and the household and the consequences of unpaid care work on the type, location and nature of paid work that women and girls can undertake, thereby impacting their economic empowerment. One of its key recommendations when creating employment opportunities for women is to put regulations in place to ensure decent work that takes into account their unpaid care work responsibilities as per their lifecycle and family structure requirements (ibid.). Finally, blogs by some of our team members have focused on topics such as ‘Unpaid care and the sustainable development goals’, ‘The fine line between unpaid care work and domestic servitude’ and ‘Advocating for care in the post-2015 agenda’. A series of posts on IDS’ Participation, Power and Social Change blog sought to direct attention to the importance of unpaid care work in public policy, crisis coping and response, and in relation to women’s empowerment. These were: ‘The good wife of development’, ‘Time for a wider conversation about life in a time of food price volatility’, ‘I’m (still) hungry, mum: the return of care’, ‘Getting 9 care onto development agendas: how is IDS doing?’, and ‘What keeps unpaid care off development agendas?’. A recent blog, ‘Fat profits for mother’s little helper’, also brought attention to unpaid care work when looking at how people eat and changing food habits in times of food price volatility. Our blogs on care have achieved an impressive and rising hit rate (total hits of over 2,500 to date), indicating that an audience for issues relating to unpaid care work is being built, filling a crucial gap in development discourse. Through these various interventions which include conference and workshop participation, keynote speeches and a range of publications within our ‘discourse saturation’ strategy, we have been increasing the accessibility of our research evidence on the linkages between unpaid care work and other issues. 2.1.2 Strategy 2: global advocacy events A major component of our international-level advocacy work has been to organise annual global advocacy strategy workshops on unpaid care. During the course of the programme we have co-hosted three global workshops. The first workshop, Bringing ‘Unpaid Care’ into Global Policy Spaces, began the discussion with a wide array of voices and organisations on how care can be brought onto the international development agenda. This was in September 2012, and was co-hosted by AAI and IDS in London. At this workshop, representatives from 13 non-governmental, labour and bilateral donor organisations came together to share their work and discuss why care is missing from the global development agenda. At the 2012 workshop, a working definition of care was proposed and agreed to by the participants: Care: meeting the material and/or developmental, emotional and spiritual needs of one or more other persons with whom one is in a direct, personal relationship. This workshop also involved envisioning what the world would look like if policymakers looked at care. The following was also explored:    Key messages from the workshop: how would/could one talk to a range of actors (donors, colleagues, feminist organisations, civil society organisations, line managers) about care? Defining assumptions: do we use instrumentalist argument? And if so, what are the concerns regarding its use? What is the frame we want to give? Participants acknowledged that they may accept different economic models. The final steps at the workshop: identifying moments that could be valuable for bringing care onto the agenda – the post-MDG process; Committee on World Food Security. Upcoming: the processes for World Bank indicators on gender. Following on from this workshop, IDS participated in the expert meeting of the UN Special Rapporteur (UNSR) on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights in Geneva in May 2013, where we shared our learning about what is working to raise the visibility of care on development policy agendas. Considerable effort went into supporting the development of thinking about the human rights of unpaid care workers, including through submissions to and reviews of the Rapporteur’s report, and in co-organising a launch for the report in London in October 2013 with our partners AAI and Oxfam GB. The report by the UN Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights, Magdalena Sepúlveda Carmona, argues that heavy and unequal care responsibilities are major barriers to gender equality and to women’s equal enjoyment of human rights and, in many cases, condemn women to poverty (UNSR 2013). At this event we also launched an animation, ‘Who Cares’, produced by IDS on the subject of unpaid care, which highlighted some of the key issues raised in the report, and also gave a practical picture of some solutions that could be initiated in order to 10 recognise care, reduce the drudgery associated with this, and redistribute it amongst families, and from families to the state (IDS 2013). To date, ‘Who Cares’ has had 17,070 views on YouTube. It was also shortlisted for the 2014 Digital Communication Awards under the ‘Image Film’ category.1 After the launch, AAI, IDS and Oxfam GB co-hosted the second global care advocacy workshop, which brought together a group of organisations working on care to brainstorm and discuss an influencing strategy to put care on the global policy agenda. The second workshop brought together some familiar faces, as well as new ones, who were at the workshop to gain and share insights on advocating for the visibility of unpaid care work and influencing policy spaces, link the global campaign with national campaigns and explore how to communicate unpaid care work to different audiences. The overall aim of this second workshop was to think about the different spaces we can occupy and to explore what works and what does not. In total there were 29 participants from a range of organisations and individuals working on, or interested in, unpaid care work, including the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC); the UN Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights and the Special Adviser to the Rapporteur; Gender and Development Network (UK); WIDE and Philippine Women in Europe (Denmark); SMERU Institute (Indonesia); BRAC Development Institute (Bangladesh); and Prospect trade union. The specific moment opened up by the UNSR report to push our care agenda forward, as well as the importance of national work and continuous links between international and national efforts, were emphasised at the workshop. The current debate around the post-2015 framework has provided the programme with a renewed opportunity to create sustainable change for women and girls and their empowerment, particularly with reference to unpaid care work. As such, January 2015 saw activists, researchers and practitioners from diverse civil society organisations come together in Bangkok, Thailand for the third global care advocacy workshop. Co-hosted by the Asia Pacific Forum on Women, Law and Development (APWLD), AAI and IDS, this third workshop was not only part of our collective organisations’ on-going work to raise the policy visibility of the intersection between women’s unpaid care work and their access to decent work, but also led to the formation of a new partnership with a new organisation – APWLD. The workshop brought together organisations engaging in international advocacy on care work – both paid and unpaid – from a human rights and feminist perspective, in order to:     gain a greater understanding of what national and international organisations are already doing (research, advocacy and programming) on women’s work – both paid and unpaid care work identify opportunities to link national and global policy agendas to recognise, reduce and redistribute care in public policies, including decent work, meaningful employment, social protection, labour rights and social dialogue) improve our individual and collective approaches to influencing policies on care agree on a set of next steps to take individually and collectively to keep the momentum of care on the national and global policy agenda in 2015. Here, we recognised the fine line between unpaid care work and paid care work (including domestic work) by acknowledging how the activities that go towards caring for someone can be paid work – as is the case with domestic workers – or unpaid care work, when it is done in the home. 1 See www.digital-awards.eu/ (accessed 19 August 2015). 11 With 2015 being the year the SDGs will be negotiated and finalised, the meeting was also an opportunity – prior to the 59th Session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) in March 2015 – to share any national and international advocacy actions leading up to CSW and also for us to reflect on what more needs to be done to ensure women’s paid and unpaid care work is addressed in the SDGs. To this end, we discussed and agreed on wording specific to three goals as discussed below, with the agreement that APWLD will take this wording to their advocacy efforts with the various governments and global actors they work with. The three goals were Goal 5 on gender equality, with a specific look at Goal 5.4 on unpaid care work; Goal 8 on employment and decent work, with a specific focus on Goals 8.3, 8.5 and 8.8 on decent work; and Goal 1.3 on social protection. These were chosen because we felt they were the three key areas that linked these two movements of unpaid care work and decent work. We looked at how we can develop the wording of these specific goals in a language that we can all support, but that helps us to advance our demands collectively. For instance, taking care into account in Goal 8 (‘promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all’) with a focus on women’s rights to decent work, would help guarantee opportunities for flexible working hours, decent and fair wages, maternity benefits, improved working conditions and safe working opportunities at a range of suitable locations – ensuring that women are not concentrated in or pushed into the informal sector because of unpaid care responsibilities. Yet, as ActionAid’s new research report Close the Gap! discusses (ActionAid 2015), this kind of decent work that women want is not easy to secure. On Goal 5.4 on unpaid care (‘recognise and value unpaid care and domestic work through the provision of public services, infrastructure and social protection policies, and the promotion of shared responsibility within the household and the family as nationally appropriate’), it was felt that the current language was too vague, which would let governments get away with too little effort to address the issues in a meaningful way. As such, all participants agreed that ‘nationally appropriate’ and the ‘promotion of shared responsibility’ should be removed; that the language of recognise, reduce and redistribute be included; that there be a greater focus on the state; and that the use of rights-based language on care and human rights should be more explicit. Why the removal of ‘promotion of shared responsibility’, for example? Its focus on the family lets the state off the hook, when there needs to be more focus on the state ‘promoting shared responsibility’. In addition, it does not acknowledge the fact that in many cases, poor families – men and women – are working very hard. In fact, the distribution of responsibilities between men and women within poor households is probably better than in middle class and richer households. Through discussions it was felt that the language needed to say something about the provision of public services to recognise, reduce and redistribute unpaid care work. A suggested rewording was the ‘provision of public services, infrastructure and social protection policies to recognise, reduce and redistribute unpaid care work and domestic work and promote a collective responsibility…’ On Goal 8, we looked at three goals that related specifically to decent work. These are:   Goal 8.3: promote development-oriented policies that support productive activities, decent job creation, entrepreneurship, creativity and innovation, and encourage formalisation and growth of micro-, small- and medium-sized enterprises including access to financial services. Goal 8.5: by 2030 achieve full and productive employment and decent work for all women and men, including for young people and persons with disabilities, and equal pay for work of equal value. 12  Goal 8.8: protect labour rights and promote safe and secure working environment for all workers, including migrant workers, particularly women migrants, and those in precarious employment. With Goal 8 more broadly it was raised that the earlier, much better language of the target, which was ‘ensure safe and secure work environment’, had been watered down to ‘promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth...’ It was also felt that one of the problems with Goal 8 is that there is no means of implementation and no suggested way to implement what is being proposed as a target. Participants showed that there was no clear understanding of the idea of decent work in itself, which has four elements: job creation, rights at work, social protection and social dialogue, with gender equality as a cross-cutting objective. For example, with Goal 8.5 (‘achieve full and productive employment and decent work for all women and men’), full and productive employment is only one element of decent work, but the language used suggested that decent work refers to the quality of the job rather than all four elements. So it was agreed that all four elements needed to be in the language of the goal, and conflation of the ideas of decent work with full and productive employment alone should not be done. Goal 8.8 was definitely seen as a win for the movements advocating for this: it had not been present in the first iteration of the goals. The inclusion of this goal shows the important role played by the advocacy to protect labour rights for all workers, particularly women, and within that category, women migrant workers. However, it was felt that a good indicator on how women migrant workers could be protected, would be crucial. The International Labour Organization’s (ILO) Convention 189 (C189) on Decent Work for Domestic Workers or States, including domestic workers in their labour codes, were said to be potential indicators for this. Finally, on Goal 1.3 (‘implement nationally appropriate social protection systems and measures for all, including floors, and by 2030 achieve substantial coverage of the poor and vulnerable’), the participants recognised the link between social protection and unpaid care. However, since our research had shown that the majority of current social protection programmes did not take care into account, the proposed language was to include care within the goal: ‘implement care-sensitive social protection systems and measures…’ It was also agreed that the use of ‘nationally appropriate’ was a problem. The biggest debate with this goal is whether to use the word ‘universal’ or not. While universal social protection was what was ideally wanted, it has been taken out from the goal. Furthermore, the debate on whether to have universality is interlinked with the debates on employment, to make sure that universal social protection is not hinged on employment. Also, a critical issue was not only who gets social protection, but also what kind of social protection is available. There was also discussion on the language of ‘achieve substantial coverage of the poor and the vulnerable’, and it was agreed that a multi-dimensional definition of poverty would need to be adopted in order to move beyond income measures of poverty. This would encompass access to land, access to services, etc. Finally, the key point around the social protection goal was its means of implementation, specifically around ensuring public financing to realise universal social protection. Our discussions centred on how macroeconomic policy could be changed, to actually allow for universality of social protection. This is particularly important as it covers both the unpaid care work part of our discussion and paid domestic work directly in terms of supporting domestic workers with care. It was suggested that there could potentially be two strategies. One would be to look at this part of the notion of universality and then how governments will actually go about financing this – through potentially taxing multinational corporations to increase domestic revenue as a key method of implementation. The second strategy would be to ask for a review of fiscal and monetary policy in order to have more space to actually 13 invest in public services. With this in mind, it was agreed that these key points around social protection should not be forgotten in terms of our advocacy. The various organisations at the workshop also discussed the opportunity 2015 brings for our work on care work (both paid and unpaid) and how care is part of the broader development justice agenda. At the end of the workshop, we discussed what we could do either individually or collectively, in order to ensure continuity and effectiveness of our efforts to make care visible at the global level. In terms of building alliances, suggestions included IDS working towards supporting some of the national and international advocacy work as part of their overall programme on care work, as well as looking collaboratively about reaching out to certain partners like the ITUC, the Women’s Major Group, and international women’s rights organisations such as the Association for Women’s Rights in Development (AWID). To coincide with CSW59, and to ensure that our partnership was putting forward a set of common policy asks around unpaid care work, AAI, APWLD and IDS subsequently produced a joint statement on women’s rights and gender equality in care work, which as of June 2015 had been endorsed by 74 organisations, including: Asia Pacific Mission for Migrants (APMM); Centre for Trade Union and Human Rights (CTUHR), Philippines; European Network of Migrant Women; the Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women; and the Women’s Human Rights Institute at the University of Toronto. The main points included in the statement were to affirm that women’s unequal responsibility for care work leads to violations of women’s rights to decent work, political participation, education, health care and leisure time. Bringing together individuals and organisations working on labour rights, particularly domestic worker rights and unpaid care work, to address the inequalities of care work, the statement demands the following: 1. 2. 3. 4. Recognition, reduction and redistribution of unpaid care work through greater state responsibility for financing and delivering quality public services, infrastructure and regulation of the private sector to support care work through the provision of parental leave, sick leave and worksite crèches. A living wage that allows workers and their families to live in dignity and recognises that women’s wages are just as important as male wages in sustaining households. Ratification of the ILO Convention 189 and Recommendation 201 on Domestic Workers is essential for the full realisation of a decent work agenda for domestic workers. Universal care-sensitive social protection is necessary to address inequality and the unequal division of care work between women and men, households and the state. Through these three global advocacy workshops we have been able to adopt strategies and identify windows of opportunity that allow us to create sustainable change for women and girls and their empowerment, particularly with reference to unpaid care work. 2.1.3 Strategy 3: ensuring visibility of our work: Interactions website The final, and integral, part of the IDS advocacy work (both internationally and nationally) has been to ensure visibility through a strong online presence. To this end, we have developed Interactions, an IDS-hosted interactive online resource featuring real-time research and analysis on the empowerment of women and girls (Interactions 2015). 14 Figure 2.1 Unpaid care work on IDS Interactions website Source: Interactions (2015). The website has been built as a ‘go-to site’ on women’s and girls’ empowerment and features up-to-the minute research findings and policy analysis on three themes relating to gender, one being on unpaid care work from IDS and partners. The website provides useful summaries on what unpaid care work is, its significance in women’s and girls’ lives, and key readings on the topic. It also outlines the research and policy processes and findings so far, showcases our international advocacy work, and allows users to meet the team behind the Unpaid Care Work programme. We are also tracking the process of making unpaid care visible in policies through sharing blogs, videos, Policy Briefings and photographs on the website. The website also hosts a database of social protection, drawing on our research which examined state-owned public policies and programmes in the sector. The social protection database covers 50+ countries and over 260 state-owned public policies and programmes, and looks at four types of social protection policies and programmes: conditional cash transfers (CCTs), public works, social transfers, and unconditional cash transfers (UCTs).2 It also highlights which policies and programmes take unpaid care work into consideration and indicates the extent to which they recognise women’s unpaid care work, reduce the drudgery associated with performing care and/or redistribute responsibilities for care (e.g. towards the state, community, men). Since November 2014, we have introduced a new functionality into the site – Interactions Live – where key events with a broad appeal are run as ‘live’ events, using social media such as Twitter and Storify, with supporting materials, up-to-date feedback and responses, as well as post-event reports and summaries.3 Interactions has been ‘live’ at the 2nd MenEngage Global Symposium in New Delhi, the global care advocacy workshop in Bangkok, and CSW59 in New York. 2 3 http://interactions.eldis.org/unpaid-care-work/social-protection (accessed 19 August 2015). http://interactions.eldis.org/global-events (accessed 19 August 2015). 15 Figure 2.2 IDS Interactions Live at the global care advocacy workshop, 2015, in Bangkok, Thailand Source: Interactions (2015). Interactions has become a central component of our movement towards making care visible at global levels. As an online advocacy tool, Interactions has enabled us to keep researchers, policymakers and activists informed on the latest developments in our research. It has also allowed us to share IDS’ and our partners’ advocacy work and introduced a wider audience to the issues of unpaid care work and women’s empowerment. 2.2 The importance of partnerships A major strength of this programme, and of our international-level advocacy work, is the partnership between IDS and AAI. Prior to working together on the Unpaid Care Work programme, AAI designed a multi-country programme in Nepal, Nigeria, Uganda and Kenya focused on women’s unpaid care work with the aim of making this work more visible and valued by women and men, community leaders and government. Over an 18-month period, AAI worked with women from ten rural and urban communities in Nepal, Nigeria, Kenya and Uganda to track their unpaid care work. The findings of this research can be read in AAI’s Making Care Visible report (ActionAid 2013), with the summary findings being reflected in a useful infographic.4 It is part of AAI’s commitment to making women’s unpaid care work central to demands for quality public services financed through more progressive domestic resource mobilisation. Indeed, back in 2012 when we formed this partnership, AAI was one, if not the only international NGO that had integrated making visible the care economy into its global strategic objectives. Their strategy aims to build and advocate gender responsive economic alternatives at all levels from cooperative enterprises to national and global policies that recognise unpaid care, guarantee comprehensive social protection and enable the most marginalised women to break the cycle of poverty. 4 www.actionaid.org/publications/making-care-visible (accessed 19 August 2015). 16 Together with AAI, IDS has been working to raise the policy visibility of women’s care work within social protection, early childhood development and poverty reduction strategies. We have done this by creating space for debate and dissemination about the policy significance of unpaid care; exploring the possible ‘policy asks’ at the global and national levels that might arise from the debate stimulated about the neglect of care by development policy; ensuring guidance and advice for feminists working in global development agencies on political strategies to make care more visible; and movement building through participating in and contributing to global networks engaging with the issue. An early marker of success of our engagement with various actors was to bring Oxfam GB into our discussions about unpaid care work. Although it is not formally funded by us through this Accountable Grant work, Oxfam GB has worked with us as partners in this endeavour to influence global actors on this issue. 2.3 Alliance building Through our work we have also aimed to build networks at both national and global levels to raise the profile of unpaid care work and link civil society partners with global civil society actors. This has been done both through our interest in spreading the issue through our ‘discourse saturation’ strategy and financial support to AAI, who were able to mobilise a range of other actors on this. As part of our alliance building efforts, we hosted a three-day international workshop at IDS in February 2014 entitled Increasing Visibility of Unpaid Care in Policy Agenda: Learning from Local Strategies (Munslow 2014). The workshop brought together the following organisations working across two projects on unpaid care work: ActionAid partner countries in Nepal, Nigeria and Uganda from the Accountable Grant work; BRAC Institute of Governance and Development, Bangladesh, and SMERU Institute, Indonesia from the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA)-funded Gender, Power and Sexuality programme; ActionAid International and ActionAid UK to share key lessons learnt on making unpaid care work visible. The workshop provided a space to deliberate the policy process associated with the promotion of gender responsive economic and social policies, surrounding the issue of women’s unpaid care work. The workshop was designed for specialists to discuss types of advocacy strategies, as well as articulate how some of their key strategic objectives fit within the policy process outlined above. Taking examples of some strategic objectives, specialists were asked to reflect both wishfully and realistically on what a successful outcome might look like (Munslow 2014). The workshop also offered the space for women’s rights coordinators and monitoring and evaluation officers from the three ActionAid country offices to consider national advocacy strategies in light of comparative activities, successes, challenges and opportunities. Also, at the 58th Session of the Commission on the Status of Women in New York in 2014, IDS was invited to participate in two side events dedicated solely to making unpaid care work visible in a post-MDG world, and a third event which recognised unpaid care work as a cross-cutting issue for challenging stereotypes and building new alliances to address gender inequality post-2015.5 The first event, Unpaid Care Work, Poverty and Human Rights was hosted by Permanent Missions of Finland and Uruguay, in collaboration with UN Women and the UN Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights. It focused on the impact of unpaid care work on women’s rights to education, employment, decent work, political participation and 5 www.unwomen.org/en/csw/csw58-2014 (accessed 19 August 2015). 17 leisure. The event was attended by approximately 60 people, including representatives from trade unions in North America, government ministries, development agencies, anti-poverty organisations in Europe, UN agencies, grass-roots organisations, and alliances of caregivers in Africa. All stood up to share their experiences and underline the urgency of valuing, supporting and redistributing women’s unpaid care work. The second meeting, Making Unpaid Care Work Count in the Post-2015 Framework, was co-organised by AAI, Centre for Women’s Global Leadership, IDS and the UN Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights.6 It was an opportunity to discuss why unpaid care work is so critical to women’s human rights and gender equality. The third was Myth and Reality: New Alliances to Challenge Stereotypes and Build Gender Equality Beyond 2015, which highlighted the programme’s work on unpaid care. Our influencing activities at CSW58 were supported by a range of coordinated communications activities, on- and offline. For example, the event was promoted via the IDS website, IDS blogs and social media channels; the programme’s Interactions website; and on partner platforms such as the ActionAid and UN websites. The ‘Who Cares’ video, produced by the programme in 2013, which has proved to be a useful advocacy tool, was used again in connection with the unpaid care events at CSW58. By the end of CSW58, the agreed conclusions were brimming with references to unpaid care work (United Nations Economic and Social Council 2014). For instance, the Commission recognises that care work, both paid and unpaid, and care services are of key importance in achieving gender equality for women and girls, and further recognises that caregiving is a critical societal function which involves shared responsibility. The conclusions highlighted:    the disproportionate share of unpaid work, particularly unpaid care work, and low paid and gender-stereotyped work such as domestic and care work the role of the state and the need to value, reduce and redistribute unpaid care work by prioritising social protection policies the need to consider unpaid care work in relation to strengthening the enabling environment and maximising investments for gender equality and the empowerment of women. The discussions at CSW58 and the references to unpaid care in the agreed conclusions provided us with an indication about unpaid care work potentially being included in the postMDG framework in some way. In addition, we did the following: (i) built a network of alliances from the three global advocacy workshops; (ii) built partnerships with national governments and other national and global civil society actors to advocate for policy change based on demands that emerge at local level; and (iii) developed partnerships with other global actors. We have also built connections across different projects to help optimise the value of the DFID AG funding. Our AG-funded work has not occurred in isolation as we have drawn on all and any opportunities open to us as part of our policy influencing agenda on unpaid care, such as the SIDA-funded Gender, Power and Sexuality (GPS) work on the care economy in Indonesia and Bangladesh. Our work on that programme has been recently published as ‘stories of influence’ for making care visible (Nesbitt-Ahmed et al. 2015). A positive account of our alliance building and engagement comes from the fact that now, a range of organisations have access to funding for work on unpaid care. Thinking back to the first global care workshop, there were many organisations interested in the issue of unpaid 6 www.ids.ac.uk/events/making-unpaid-care-work-count-in-the-post-2015-framework (accessed 19 August 2015). 18 care, but they had no money or mandate to work on this topic. Only AAI and IDS had the funds to work on these issues at that time. Our engagement has created a space for other partners such as Oxfam GB, Gender and Development Network and ITUC to work on this issue. In addition, meetings we had over the course of 2014 with the Hewlett Foundation contributed towards their new line of grants-making on women’s economic empowerment, which has a strong focus on unpaid care work.7 2.4 Achievements to date Through our various activities, we have generated and disseminated a growing body of evidence of the under-recognition of unpaid care work in public policy and how it is affected by increased global economic volatility in our national country partners (Kenya, Nepal, Nigeria and Uganda) and globally. This evidence has enabled us to deepen our engagement with policymakers and civil society nationally and globally, taking lessons and advocacy to strategic international and domestic policy arenas. We have also strengthened our relationships with international organisations (UN Women, AAI, Oxfam, World Food Programme, BRAC International, ADB) and continued to extend our network of interest in raising the visibility of care to new researchers and practitioners. We have also begun discussions on an evaluation framework for understanding processes for increasing the visibility of unpaid care in policy agendas and developed conceptual clarity regarding links between unpaid care work and women’s economic empowerment. In choosing to use a range of avenues and processes to engage with, we have also contributed to making care visible and bringing it onto the policy agenda. Our work has been greatly helped by the UN Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights’ recent report (UNSR 2013), which positioned unpaid care work as a major human rights issue. These efforts have contributed to a growing range of voices of academics, feminists and pro-feminists, international organisations, government organisations, members of trade unions and grass-roots organisations who have voiced support in recognising, reducing and redistributing women’s unpaid care work as essential for gender equality and the empowerment of women.8 There has been significant progress made since 2012. At the first global care advocacy workshop in 2012 when participants identified global-level processes to target, it was felt that the likelihood of getting care on the post-2015 agenda was low, but organisations could use the process of consultation to raise the visibility of care. In 2015, it is heartening to see that unpaid care work is now gaining recognition as a major determinant of women’s and girls’ empowerment. The final outcome document of the Open Working Group on Sustainable Development Goals includes a target (Target 5.4) on unpaid care work under proposed Goal 5: ‘achieve gender equality and empower all women’ (United Nations General Assembly 2014b). This stand-alone goal pertains to the recognition of unpaid care work and domestic work, and calls for provision of public services, infrastructure and social protection. This resonates closely with the key policy recommendations IDS and our partners had put forth in order for economic empowerment to be optimised, shared across families and sustained across generations. Indeed, the inclusion of unpaid care work in the Open Working Group, which was made possible through the collective efforts of women’s rights organisations, activists and supportive policymakers, reveals the important role of collective action in making care visible. 77 http://hewlett.org/programs/global-development-and-population/expanding-choices/international-womens-economicempowerment (accessed 19 August 2015). 8 www.genderanddevelopment.org/page/care-learning-event#learning%20event (accessed 19 August 2015). 19 While it is impossible to say exactly how we have contributed to this shift in policy agenda setting, as Kate Donald (Advisor to the UN Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty) stated in her Open Democracy article (Donald 2014), it is certainly, A result of hard work and lobbying from various quarters – all inspired and boosted by realities witnessed and experienced on the ground. Dedicated champions within some UN agencies, government ministries, and development agencies; strong and persistent advocacy from some major NGOs; our researchers consolidating the evidence base; a prominent report from the Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty presented to the UN General Assembly last year: these have all played their part. IDS has contributed to these discussions by consolidating the evidence base from an academic position by highlighting the invisibility of care in public policy and the significance of unpaid care work. High-quality research on the topic has contributed to building a good evidence base around the gaps in social protection policies and early childhood policies from an unpaid care work perspective. As a world-renowned academic institute which has been conducting cutting-edge research and policy work on the issue of unpaid care work, we have been able to enter and influence spaces such as academic conferences and workshops, knowledge-heavy partners and donor offices. Our credible action learning approach has helped to draw out and highlight to us and our partners, the lessons and challenges involved in the processes of policy advocacy on this issue. Our engagement has been one of mutual construction of this knowledge with our partners, aiming together at policy impact – both in terms of making care visible at national and global levels, and in advising and proposing practical policy solutions that are care sensitive. Finally, having global convenorship skills has allowed us to be a part of existing collaborations, as well as build stronger networks around the Unpaid Care Work programme. These activities have meant that the Unpaid Care Work programme and its sub-theme and its international partners are in a stronger position to influence global and national policy processes to make care visible as we begin the final year of our programme. 20 3 What works, challenges and key lessons learnt Although we have achieved a number of successes since the programme began in 2012, such as the programme itself having a lot of visibility, we have also gained insights into what works. For instance, we think that large-scale global issues such as migration, HIV and ageing have brought questions of unpaid care work to the fore. The economic crisis also made a big contribution to raising the issue of care in the global North. On the one hand, this has made care more visible to donor agencies in their own context. On the other hand, critiques of the impact of the economic crisis were showing the gendered impact of austerity measures both in the global North and the global South. As such, rising poverty and inequality in the global North as a result of the financial crisis was seen as a political opportunity to talk about care as an issue that is important for every country, not just lowincome countries in the South. To seize this window of opportunity meant working differently and making new alliances with organisations that are not in the development ‘sector’. Here, we discuss what works in making care visible, the challenges we have faced along the way and the key lessons we have learnt in this programme. 3.1 What works? Our work enabled us to gain insights into what works in order to achieve the overall aim of getting care onto the development agenda. Within both this AG project, and the recently concluded SIDA-funded GPS project, we found similar issues and insights. The lessons and challenges learnt over the course of the programme have been shared in a recent publication: Making Care Visible: Influencing Story on Policy Change on Unpaid Care Work (Nesbitt-Ahmed et al. 2015). As this report has acknowledged, the unconventional spaces we found ourselves in, such as the Clean Cooking Conference, enabled us to introduce care into new audiences. The ‘creative’ opportunities we used such as the animation, ‘Who Cares’, and our sound partners and networks further strengthened our work. We have also learnt that using entry points related to specific sectors within which we want to integrate unpaid care works well. A ‘discourse saturation’ to raise the issue and getting key actors in these sectors to place more emphasis on the societal significance of unpaid care is key to success. This could be done, for example, by organising series of discussions with relevant experts or people who have worked on issues related to, say, women’s economic empowerment as a specific sector. Linking care as an issue that could help address women’s poverty, and linking it more broadly to the human rights framework was an effective entry point, as well. As already explained, the UNSR report on extreme poverty and human rights has been a useful tool in our work to make care visible (UNSR 2013). Two types of messages worked well – positive and negative. In the positive messages, we highlighted the contribution unpaid care work could make, in making programmes more effective and sustainable. For example, to show the impact care-sensitive policies and programmes will have in ensuring that the outcomes in the social protection sector are achieved. Reversing the message entailed showing how the absence of care considerations made programme outcomes unachievable. For example, we highlighted how the exclusion of unpaid care work could potentially stop social protection programmes being empowering or transformative. In our new project on the balance between paid work and unpaid care work, we are arguing that not taking care into account makes women’s economic empowerment limited, individualised and unsustainable. 21 Another learning was that clear ‘policy asks’ are essential – for example, targeting a specific policy that can either directly reduce the drudgery of unpaid care work or redistribute this work through the provision of public services. Additionally, as unpaid care work cuts across many different areas, what works is recognising the multiple dimensions and connections to many different issues, including early child care, elderly home care, disabled care issues, domestic worker’s rights, etc. This creates many different opportunities for inclusion of care in policy agendas from a range of entry points. Working across areas brings a range of networks and groups, whose voices may already be strong in those areas. However, it is also a challenge to contain these numerous entry points, which could dilute the focus and unified message on unpaid care work. Coming together during workshops has also enabled us to think about the different spaces we can occupy and the different strategies being used by individuals and organisations to make care visible. Discussing these issues in a safe space enables us to explore what others are doing to get care on the agenda, and build and strengthen our networks. Through these workshops we have been able to start building alliances to discuss our initiatives on women’s unpaid care work, which enables us to collectively organise around the issue of care to make sure it is on global policy agendas. These workshops have also been crucial for sharing and testing out what works and what does not work in our ‘influencing strategies’, thereby building a repertoire of effective policy influencing strategies, and promoting mutual lesson learning. Social media – and particular websites such as Interactions – have worked to effectively make visible the issue’s significance – both in terms of the scale of women’s unpaid care work, and the importance of this work’s contribution to the economy. Social media and websites also help in tracking what is being done to get care on the development agenda, and build momentum and awareness around specific policy moments. Finally, we have had some ‘unexpected wins’: donors (Hewlett Foundation) funding work on empowerment and care, and decisions by key development actors (e.g. Asian Development Bank) to begin to look at prioritising the issue in their work. These developments showcase a ripple effect of our work, through which our work is being recognised in multiple and unexpected spaces. 3.2 Challenges In spite of these successes and insights into what works, we have faced a number of challenges along the way. The recently published Making Care Visible report raises some of these challenges, including the issue of the dilution of a focus on care arising from its link to diverse sectors and issues (ActionAid 2013). Another challenge has included questions from various groups, such as feminist economists who repeatedly ask us about our data sources and our framing of the issue as unpaid care work, rather than unpaid work. Other challenges include ensuring funding and resultant continuity of the programme, the disjuncture between conversations at the national and international level and how those at the national level can get more involved at an international level. A significant challenge relates to the cross-cutting nature of unpaid care work. As the issue of care cuts across a number of sectors, there are also a range of actor constituencies and networks involved in these sectors. Examples of some groups that need to be brought together include feminist economists, labour economists, women’s rights and child rights activists and practitioners. It is hugely challenging to get all these actors together to discuss policy and programme directions, as they not only have different interests but also different 22 conceptualisations and entry points relating to unpaid care work, unpaid work and economic empowerment. Another issue of care’s multi-sectoral nature is a dilution of the focus on care. This has been faced by our partners AAI in Nigeria. One of the ‘policy asks’ of AAI Nigeria was to ensure that the government properly financed and implemented the Integrated Early Childhood Development policy (see Interactions 2012). While this gives a clear demand that the government and civil society can work towards, there are also risks with focusing on early childhood development. One possibility could be that the children’s rights agenda for early childhood development could overshadow women’s demands that the state take on a fairer share of childcare provision. While a laudable goal in itself this, however, would not lead to an increased recognition of women’s unpaid care work, which was the focus of AAI Nigeria’s intervention in the first place. The statement below, which comes from a partner in our SIDA-funded work on care, highlights another set of challenges around linking the national issues with global advocacy. This resonated with partners in the AG project as well: We have had international workshops organised by ActionAid International, bringing people together on unpaid care, which was interesting. However, for the national teams when you are talking about CSW, the national teams are not sure about how this is relevant for them. There wasn’t enough work out there to link these national projects to the international processes. Space may be limited in the international arena too. Strategically there may be more space and traction at the national level to engage on unpaid care, for example, looking at the ageing population at the national level this is more relevant than global economic change. (Bangladesh partner from SIDA-funded work on care) Some resistance has come from Southern activists, who have questioned our framing around unpaid care work instead of ‘unpaid work’. In India, for example, the Unpaid Work Collective is working together to problematise and redefine ‘unpaid care work’ as part of the set of activities that can be called ‘unpaid work’. It views the ‘unpaid care work’ paradigm as predominantly North-centric and adopts an analysis that is located in the context of a ‘barrier to women’s participation in productive labour markets’. Within this collective, the argument is that from the global South perspective, the unpaid work done by men and women extends much beyond merely ‘care’, and is part of their survival and livelihoods. While we accept that care work is a part of the larger unpaid work done by women, we have argued that the focus of our programme of work (within the AG and beyond) remains unpaid care work, as that is what has been so invisible in public policy and programming to date. 3.3 Key lessons learnt In addition to the key lessons highlighted by the Making Care Visible report (which included the importance of flexibility; correct timing to exploit larger trends; and to seize opportunities), in this section we explore three further lessons learnt within the AG work on unpaid care work. The first key lesson has been about mutual benefits. While IDS has given space to partners to deepen their engagement on this issue, our partners have also given us space and visibility. This has revealed the importance of exchanging spaces. For instance, by bringing Oxfam GB and AAI along for the Growth and Economic Opportunities for Women (GrOW) research inception workshop in the UK in October 2014, we were able to introduce them to a new space. Similarly, the AAI global advocacy workshops were an opportunity for IDS to meet other organisations, such as Oxfam and the UNSR again, to connect and build relationships. In the same way, our work has also provided us with mutual benefits. 23 Our cutting-edge research has provided IDS’ and our partners’ legitimacy, and has enabled us to develop a coherent message for advocating on unpaid care work. At the same time, the legitimacy of our partners’ work, their working with local organisations, communities and women in a range of settings, have provided IDS with the opportunity to distil pertinent issues and also gain from the legitimacy our partners have in global and national advocacy spaces. Secondly, the political nature of the discourse on care, particularly in the context of issues such as austerity, ageing, migration and HIV/AIDS, enables an opportunity to explore the generation of a discourse that breaks the North-South divide about care. Such a discourse would open up possibilities for an international feminist narrative on care and compel us to think about opportunities for forging alliances and solidarity with movements and organisations in the North and the South. This would also make it more appealing and visible in global policy spaces. Thirdly, we have learnt that creating a critical mass on the value of unpaid care work is vital. Our work has revealed the significant role of a critical mass working on this issue in two ways. Firstly, it is important to generate a critical mass of aware women who perform unpaid care work in the homes and their communities. This can be done by enabling them to reflect on the work they do as real and valuable through, for instance, participatory photography. This builds momentum and energy at the grass-roots level, enabling women to empower themselves. Secondly, a critical mass of researchers who are capable of engaging with government and other policymakers on issues concerning unpaid care are more able to make visible unpaid care work as an issue of importance for policy by adopting a range of strategies – including making enough noise about the issue through a discourse saturation approach. Finally, we have learnt that keeping up the momentum on the diverse and flexible strategies adopted to making care visible is essential, particularly for ensuring that care stays on the national and global policy agendas beyond 2015. This includes identifying those key opportunities and spaces we may have to influence the policy process, assessing the kind of information we need to have to be able to influence effectively, continuing to build alliances across different movements to ensure care is present in multiple streams of work and at different levels (global, regional and national levels), and ensuring care remains central in the work we are doing beyond the AG project, such as the GrOW programme on women’s economic empowerment which commenced in January 2015. 24 4 Future directions As detailed at the beginning of this report, our programme is ongoing at a critical point in time with the SDGs being finalised by September 2015. The body of research and advocacy tools that we have developed over the first three-and-a-half years of the programme, combined with the financial support we provided to our international partner, have contributed to advocacy efforts for making care visible at the policy level. The articulation of unpaid care work within one of the SDGs is an indication of the efforts of a range of actors across a very wide network of organisations, with the IDS contribution being significant, yet only one of many contributions towards this step. In the final year of the programme, we are continuing our ‘discourse saturation’ strategy on unpaid care work by producing two Policy Briefings – one on old age and unpaid care work, and the other on tax, women’s rights and unpaid care work. We will also be presenting our work at the 2015 International Association for Feminist Economics (IAFFE) conference, as a way to engage with feminist economists on the issue of care, social reproduction and women’s economic empowerment. We will be developing a paper on the enabling environment for women’s economic empowerment, and will continue to develop Interactions as the go-to website for up-to-date work and showcase findings on unpaid care work as a significant issue for gender equality. From our previous work, a new research project has been secured. This project explores how women’s economic empowerment policy and programming can generate a ‘double boon’ – paid work that empowers women and provides more support for their unpaid care work responsibilities. The 27-month project, Balancing Unpaid Care Work and Paid Work: Successes, Challenges and Lessons for Women’s Economic Empowerment Programmes and Policies, commenced in January 2015 and is part of the GrOW programme funded by the International Development Research Centre, DFID and the Hewlett Foundation. Through a unique research and advocacy partnership, we are working in Nepal, Rwanda, Tanzania and India to explore the social organisation of care within low-income households and how policies and programmes can positively influence the balance between paid work and unpaid care work that is empowering for women and families. The approach that we are using in this project draws from our AG work, where we look at care both from an economic empowerment perspective, and a rights perspective. The aim of the project is to challenge the current notions of women’s economic empowerment as labour market participation, instead putting the women’s choice of the type, location of work, etc., in the centre of notions of empowerment. This, we hope, will also allow a recognition of the importance of a positive balance between paid work and unpaid care work, for which care work needs to be redistributed within the family, and more importantly, from families to the state. Our overall aim is that our work on making care visible does not stop with the ending of the AG programme, as our advocacy also entails working towards ‘mainstreaming’ (unpaid) care into a range of research programmes within our organisations and those of our partner organisations. This can already be seen within IDS through the two-year Engendering Men: Evidence on Routes to Change for Gender Equality (EMERGE) project, co-led by colleagues in IDS in a consortium with Promundo-US and Sonke Gender Justice Network. The EMERGE project has nine themes, one of which is on unpaid care work, fatherhood and the care economy. The lessons that we have learnt, especially those of creating a critical mass of actors and organisations, maintaining momentum, developing and deepening partnerships, collaborating across the North-South divide, and finally, being able to be flexible and committed to an action learning perspective combining cutting-edge research with policy and practice impact, will be critical in ensuring our progress towards this aim. 25 References ActionAid (2015) Close the Gap! The Cost of Inequality in Women’s Work, ActionAid ActionAid (2013) Making Care Visible: Women’s Unpaid Care Work in Nepal, Nigeria, Uganda and Kenya, www.actionaid.org/sites/files/actionaid/making_care_visible.pdf (accessed 17 August 2015) Chopra, D. 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