Care is Skilled Work: Changing Perception of Care

Undervalued Care Work

In our metrics of success, how often do we see individuals identify themselves as successful homemakers? Success in Nepali society is tied to financial security and professional achievements. Similarly, excelling in homemaking along with a career is a rarity. This division of labor — between reproductive and productive work — plays a critical role in making our everyday more convenient, yet it goes unrecognized. In South Asian families, for instance, members of households are interdependent; however, societal applause typically goes to those who are financially contributing, often overlooking the crucial contributions of those managing households and providing care. This imbalanced valuation of labor reflects the deep-rooted societal biases that perpetually undervalue care work, despite its fundamental importance in our lives.

The perception of paid and unpaid care work in the society is concerning. In many countries, the monetary value of unpaid care work exceeds that of market sectors such as manufacturing, commerce, and transportation. Despite its expanse and essential contribution, the work fails to receive the policy attention it deserves due to its cultural devaluation. Meanwhile, the paid care economy employs around 381 million globally and yet it remains excluded from the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) calculations, thereby making their labor invisible and the workforce precarious. The systematic reduction of care work, being viewed as work that involves little to no skills and is simply an extension of women’s “natural” caregiving role, contributes to caregivers’ low status, minimal pay, and limited representation.

Recognizing Care as Skilled Work

It is essential to frame and reframe both paid and unpaid care work as skilled and valuable rather than low-skilled or unskilled. Care work draws on a diverse set of skills, knowledge, and abilities that are constantly at play; it is more than the completion of a few repetitive tasks. Effective care work encompasses front line health, social, and therapeutic roles and demands compassion, sound judgement, and extreme physical labor. It is a learned skill that supports people’s lives through a wide range of clinical, emotional, and academic knowledge, with ongoing learning often occurring throughout the caregiving period. It is time intensive and requires one-on-one interaction. Furthermore, technology cannot drastically replace the people providing care and reduce the time to complete care acts. This irreplaceability of care implies that it should be highly valued, prioritized and accessible to all.

Sharing Care Work

Care is an essential need and not a responsibility of one person. It can be managed collectively by the state, market, community and family to improve the quality of care. This shift is underway in various forms, with the increasing number of care homes catering to an aging population and persons with disabilities, and childcare centers run by the community and private sector. To support this transition, policymakers must focus on designing favorable policies, services, and awareness initiatives that enhance the existing care infrastructure, service and remuneration for care workers.

What Policies and Services Can Consider

Effective solutions must consider local needs, demographics, and existing care provisions. For instance, Japan anticipates 7 million dementia patients by 2025, with 1 in 5 older people having dementia, prompting innovative responses through research, awareness, and care home initiatives. Japan has 30 percent of households with elderly living by themselves. The home visits provided by medical officers utilize technology to record the vitals of the patients which has improved elderly patients’ care and increased the care givers’ productivity.

Similarly, the village of Share Kanazawa exemplifies a community where elderly individuals and those with disabilities support each other to live a fulfilled life, aided by staff and student volunteers. The District Care System of Bogota, Manzanas del Cuidado, offers caregivers time to perform their personal activities while leaving the people they care for with the professionals for free, with the option of at-home-services.

Informed policies that recognize, reduce, and redistribute unpaid care work and ensure reward and representation of care workers are essential. Several countries are implementing the “5R Framework for Decent Care Work,” a transformative approach rooted in gender equality and social justice. Uruguay stands out as a leader in creating comprehensive care systems that engage families, the state, and communities. Similarly, Bosnia and Herzegovina recently enacted legislation acknowledging the work of parent-caregivers, providing financial support and social security benefits. In Argentina, the integration of domestic workers into the Comprehensive Unemployment Benefits System ensures their rights and protections. Meanwhile, the Government of Nepal in its 16^th Periodic Plan recognizes the need to record and manage care related work and is determined to formulate national care policy. This would create a path for recognizing unpaid care work and expanding existing care services with increased investments to provide quality care.

Care is an Essential Need

Care is a natural and intrinsic part of our society; it is fundamental to our well-being and essential for a vibrant and sustainable economy. Much of this work remains unpaid, undervalued and underpaid despite the knowledge, skill, and time it requires. To shift this perception, we need informed and contextual policies that recognize and reward the caregivers’ diligence, insight, and commitment to developing skills necessary for caring for others. Policies that establish care as an essential need and not an individual responsibility are urgent so that the unpaid caregivers can provide more compassionate and sustainable care alongside specialized services, mitigating caregiver burnout and allowing caregivers to adapt to the needs of the care receiver.