In the framework of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW67), United Cities and Local Governments (UCLG), gathers the constituency of local and regional governments, key partners and civil society to collectively reflect on our role and progress in localizing SDG 5, challenging gender-based inequalities and violence, and advocating for equitable political representation in all spheres of leadership.

PSI General Secretary, Rosa Pavanelli was invited to speak on the panel “The role of ‘care’ and ‘care services’ as transformative enablers of feminist cities and territories.”

"Thank you for inviting PSI to this very interesting session, it's another step towards consolidating our cooperation. Public Services International is the global union federation that organizes trade unions in the public sector, meaning organizing workers in your municipalities and regional governments. We consider this alliance with UCLG strategic because only by joining our efforts can we advance and promote a different idea of justice and a different idea of developing our societies.

only by joining our efforts can we advance and promote a different idea of justice and a different idea of developing our societies

In this alliance, the role of women and feminists is very important because we don't just want to have change and innovation, but we want to have a transformative process of our society that can lead to a feminist approach to development, which is fundamental if you want to address the multiple crises we are in: the health crisis, the economic crisis, the climate crisis, and the challenging digital transformation we are talking about these days. And the role of workers, especially women workers, is also crucial.

I think that you all are very eager to get support from voters, from the people, the citizens of your cities when you go for election, but the first alliance that you have to build is with workers, and that can support your political manifesto, your political objectives, and achieve the goals that are in your electoral campaign. To do that, I think that we need to cover some issues. The first is to recognize the value of the work and the workers of care. When we talk about care as a factor to transform the society, we are not simply talking about care economies, not just an economic factor. It's much more than that. It's thinking about a society that's completely different. That is why we addressed this issue in a manifesto that we launched last year, and we are promoting guidelines to implement this manifesto. We move from the fact that first, we need to recognize the social and economic value of care, and it has to be recognized at all levels, the paid and unpaid value of care, and recognize care as a fundamental human right.

Reward every new narrative care with equal pay for work of equal value. That means raising the wages of women who continue to suffer from an unbelievable gap, reducing the burden of unpaid care on women, and redistributing the care work in the family between the sexes, between genders, and within the society, because it's not just an individual responsibility and family responsibility. It's a collective responsibility, and institutions have to respond to that.

we need to recognize the social and economic value of care, and it has to be recognized at all levels, the paid and unpaid value of care, and recognize care as a fundamental human right.

Finally, we think that we need to reclaim the care services in public hands (because privatization has led to the main problems that we saw during the pandemic and the disconnection between the health system, the care system) and create a favorable environment where emergencies can be faced all together collectively with the resources that we really need. And now that we're talking about digital, we think that this work on care can be accompanied with a different approach also on the theme of digital. For sure, digital has to be used to protect data, but also to protect the know-how of the public administrations that are involved. Often we look at public procurement simply outsourced, not only the service but the know-how of the institution itself, and this is to the detriment of our institutions and our democracy. At the very end, it can be dangerous, and we think that there's another common that we need to protect in the future, and this common is data, the collective data that we need to protect, as well as care, health, education, water, and so forth. 

I stop here, and I think that we have a lot of work to do together--thank you very much for your attention.