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Care is fundamental to how societies function, but the work of providing it is seldom shared equally. Children need to be supervised, older people need care, and some people with disabilities might need assistance. Yet, more often than not, this care has been and continues to be provided informally within families, especially by women at the cost of their economic opportunities. Any apparent trade-off between women’s economic participation and care-reliant reproductive decisions is actually a false one, and that the variable missing from that framing could be effective care infrastructure.

As per an OECD report, among older people who receive care, an average of 60% rely on informal sources. Several countries have high rates of care dependency yet small formal care sectors, with care responsibilities likely falling on the kin of the care receiver.

Within these informal sources, care responsibilities are in most cases shouldered by female family members. Across countries, women spend anywhere between two to ten times the amount of time men do in unpaid care work. Progress on outcomes such as parity in pay is often contrasted by lacklustre progress on matters such as caregiving.

Caregiving responsibilities cause disruptions

In India, women spend a significant amount of their time in unpaid housework and care work; more so than men and across marital status, educational qualifications, or employment. Economist Shrayana Bhattacharya, in her book Desperately Seeking Shah Rukh paints a stark picture of the unpaid work done by women in India. Over two-thirds of women contribute to unpaid labour, putting in 3.26 billion hours of unpaid care work valued at Rs 19 lakh crore.

Time is finite and caregiving can leave women with limited time for other activities like paid work, or even for rest and leisure. Participation in the formal economy takes the biggest hit when women are expected to choose between familial responsibilities and employment. A study by researchers from IIT-Guwahati found that 114.6 million women between the ages of 15 to 35 were absent from the labour market.

Also read: How the Draft Social Security Rules Weaken Maternity Rights

Caregiving responsibilities cause disruptions that lead women to withdraw from employment, reduce their number of working hours or take up flexible, but often insecure work. Pregnancy and childbirth can cause disruptions on their own, but it is the subsequent caregiving that follows, which is assumed as the sole responsibility of the women, that prolongs that disruption from months to years, and for many, also permanently. Nor is this care limited to their own children; women are also expected to look........

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