IN 25 years, Pakistan is projected to become the world’s third most populous country, a figure highlighted at the Dawn Population Summit held earlier in December. With a rising population, care needs across the country will increase just as quickly, including direct personal care and indirect care activities in domestic, hospital, and community settings. Despite being essential, care work continues to be treated as a responsibility that naturally belongs to women, rather than as skilled labour that deserves dignity, protection, or policy attention.

Recently, to mark the International Day of Care and Support, the International Labour Organisation called for “stronger recognition of care work and coordinated action to ensure decent work, social protection, and equality for all care workers” in Pakistan. However, a darker truth must be addressed. Not only is there a disproportionate burden of formal and informal care work on women, but it is also borne unequally among women, making care work a deeply intersectional issue.

If we are to understand care work, we must not look at gender in isolation but confront the intersecting inequalities that dictate whose labour counts and whose is quietly........

© Dawn