乐鱼 体育

It is also the fastest-growing sector of work in the world鈥�. The COVID-19 pandemic has amplified the importance of care work. It has also exposed how women perform most caregiving work, which is unpaid, underpaid, and/or undervalued. Globally, women and girls contribute more than and perform more than . The inordinate amount of unpaid care work women and girls perform , which contributes to greater gender inequities worldwide.

The global care economy鈥攖he paid and unpaid labor related to caregiving such as childcare, elder care, and domestic chores鈥攊s a critical sector that . Care work is economically valuable but globally undervalued. In the United States, , annually. Globally, if unpaid care workers earned a minimum wage they would add .

In a new policy brief, The Global Care Economy, the 乐鱼 体育鈥檚 Maternal Health Initiative explores , , and the . Investing in the paid and unpaid care workforce, creating family-friendly workplaces, and addressing the harmful social norms and the physical and mental burdens of caregiving are critical to support and value care work globally.

In the United States, women, especially women of color, are including care work, leaving them at higher risk of COVID-19 illness and mortality. This is also the case globally, where women and girls make up .

Unpaid care work presents additional challenges for women. Globally, due to their caregiving responsibilities. Most (93 percent) are women. In the United States, prior to the pandemic. Now, an in the United States are unpaid caregivers.

While there have been some policy-level interventions to support caregivers in the United States and globally, greater investments are needed to appropriately value and support care work. Investing in the paid and unpaid care workforce can result in increased household earnings, a more gender-equitable distribution of unpaid care work, and improved working conditions in the paid care sector. To support parents in the workforce, it is critical to support family-friendly workplaces through flexible leave policies. Additionally, policies and programs must address harmful social norms that contribute to the unequal distribution of care work.

This Global Health & Gender Policy Brief was made possible through the generous support of EMD Serono, the healthcare business of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany.