Unpaid care work such as cooking, cleaning, and care nourishes and sustains our children and our workforces. It is a non-negotiable necessity, and a social good. However, its unequal distribution along gender lines and lack of support have severe negative consequences for women’s rights and poverty reduction. This article draws attention to the impact of the burdens of unpaid care work on the human rights of women caregivers living in poverty and analyses the relevance of international human rights law to decisions on the necessary responses and remedies. The authors present recommendations for policy and practice based on human rights law and standards.

 The impact of care work responsibilities on women’s human rights

The impact on human rights of excessive unpaid care work has, thus far, not been adequately acknowledged or examined in the discourse and research on care. Human rights have the potential to successfully place the issue of care work on the policy agendas of governments and development organisations who have committed to upholding principles of gender equality and women’s rights. Human rights can complement the development perspective by explicitly envisaging all women as agents with inherent dignity and entitlements to a range of rights – rather than just as mothers, as workers, or engines for greater productivity or efficiency. Human rights law provides concrete tools that individuals and organisations can use to exert pressure on policymakers and hold States (and to a certain extent, non-State actors) accountable for actions or inactions that exacerbate or perpetuate the unequal distribution and lack of support and recognition of unpaid care work.  

There are several ways in which care obstructs the enjoyment of human rights of women in poverty. In terms of the right to education (International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, ICESCR, article 13; Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, CEDAW, article 10), excessive care duties can result in withdrawal from school or university and diminish the time and energy girls and women can devote to studies, networking, and extra-curricular activities, hindering their progress and restricting their opportunities and educational attainment. Concerning women’s right to decent work (ICESCR articles 6 and 7; CEDAW article 11), heavy and unequal unpaid care responsibilities can bar women from entering the labour market and force them to accept low-waged, informal, and precarious jobs, often lacking social security. The right to social security (ICESCR article 9) is threatened when women are pushed into informal jobs with precarious employment status and little or no access to social insurance benefits such as paid maternity leave or pensions, or even when they have lower social security contributions than men, due to lower wages and ‘interrupted’ work histories.

The right to health (ICESCR, article 12) of caregivers is at risk since unpaid care can be arduous, stressful, emotionally difficult, and even dangerous (for example, through exposure to fumes or burns from cooking stoves or risk of assault while fetching fuel or water). Care work can also restrict and potentially violate women’s right to participation (International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, ICCPR, article 25) due to ideological barriers (gender stereotypes depicting women as carers whose place is in the home) as well as practical reality of excessive time spent in care. Intense unpaid care can also threaten women’s right to enjoy the benefits of scientific progress (ICESCR article 15; Universal Declaration of Human Rights article 27), considering the lack of access to labour-saving domestic technologies and services, such as piped water or adequate energy sources. The widespread and systematic way in which care work is assigned to women – intimately linked to damaging gender stereotypes and intersecting grounds of discrimination, such as race, class or ethnic origin – undermines their right to equality and non-discrimination.

It is imperative to raise awareness of the human rights implications of unpaid care for principled and strategic reasons. A human rights perspective focuses on the behaviour and obligations of States, the chief duty-bearers under human rights law. A focus on women’s rights and States’ obligations helps to identify who is entitled to make claims, and who must act. As such, human rights can empower women and enhance accountability by holding policymakers and authorities responsible for policies and actions which increase the burden, deny support, or fail to distribute unpaid care. Highlighting the legal duty of States is critical because States’ actions (or lack thereof) often determine which groups access quality care and who bears the costs of providing it.

A human rights approach also provides a framework for practical action to better recognise, distribute, and support unpaid care work. Under international human rights treaties – including the ICESCR, CEDAW, and ICCPR, as well as the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) and the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) – as well as through constitutional and domestic legislation such as Bills of Rights or equality legislation – States have voluntarily assumed legally binding obligations that ought to compel them to address unpaid care. As such, States cannot adequately meet their obligations under these norms without tackling the difficulties, intensity, and gendered distribution of unpaid care work.

Human rights standards are concerned with the pursuit of substantive equality rather than just formal equality. In this sense, States must ensure not just that women have the same formal rights as men, but also that women can enjoy their rights in practice. For instance, under the CEDAW, States recognise that achieving equality requires transforming gender stereotypes, rigid roles and prejudices, such as the responsibility of women and men in the upbringing and development of their children (article 5(b)). Thus, under human rights law, the gendered distribution of unpaid care work – clearly based on such prejudices and gender stereotypes – can no longer be confined to the private sphere and must be tackled by the State as a matter of priority to ensure full gender equality.

Implications for policy and practice

 All stakeholders including development organisations must be involved in tackling this challenge. However, human rights law requires States to play the central role. Immediate change can be pursued through programming, policy, and legislation, guided by human rights principles and obligations, in three ways: 1) recognising and measuring unpaid care work; 2) redistributing and reducing the inequalities and intensities of unpaid care through gender-sensitive public services and infrastructure; 3) applying a care perspective in policymaking.

Recognising and measuring unpaid care work refers to the need of timely, reliable, and comparable sex-disaggregated data on unpaid care work, such as time-use surveys, to inform evidence-based gender-sensitive policy and programming. Redistributing and reducing the inequalities and intensities of unpaid care through gender-sensitive public services and infrastructure refers to the obligation of the State to provide infrastructure and affordable, accessible, and high-quality public services to reduce the time and drudgery care entails. The human rights framework provides specific guidance on the provision of public services. In particular, the principles of non-discrimination and equality require States to ensure that public services meet the standards of availability, accessibility, adaptability, and quality, and to expand coverage in ways that reduce class, gender, and regional inequalities, focusing on physical and economic accessibility for the most disadvantaged persons, groups, and regions. Such measures might include, for instance, extended school day programmes and the improvement of palliative care systems.

Finally, applying a care perspective in policymaking refers to the systematic integration of care into policy/programme design, implementation, and monitoring across all relevant sectors, by policy makers, development practitioners, and other actors. Here, too, the role of the State is critical not only in funding, supporting, or providing care, but also in positioning care as the social and collective responsibility it is.