This PS RCA Toolkit complements the original Participatory Methodology: Rapid Care Analysis that focuses on community and local government roles in addressing women’s heavy and unequal share of unpaid care and domestic work. The toolkit also complements broader gender equity audits and strategies for business.
The study seeks to bring visibility to this work and underscore its significance in economic policy. The urgency of the project is highlighted by the recent social and economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has significantly affected unpaid care work, altering its distribution among men and women as well as across racial and ethnic groups. The paper also brings in the voices of the people who are holding crucial caregiving roles in their communities so readers can hear from individuals directly.
This research study across three countries – Kenya, UK, and Zimbabwe – was carried out to identify the dominant narratives that influence public perceptions of care and informal work. It enabled the researchers to develop and test new narratives that could be used to improve public attitudes towards care and informal work.
The US Care Policy Scorecard demonstrates that federal UUCW policies are severely lacking, and the needs of caregivers and care workers are not being met by federal policies. It is women of color and immigrant women who are most harmed by the US’s failure to fully support working families, caregivers, and care workers.
The Scorecard helps care advocates to assess how care-related policies are adopted, budgeted for, and implemented by governments, and to what extent they can transform the social organisation of care. The paper also includes preliminary results from the application of this tool in Kenya, and shares learnings from the use of the findings for national-level care policy advocacy.
The Care Policy Scorecard provides a practical tool to assess and track the extent to which government policies related to care are adopted, budgeted for and implemented, and the extent to which they have a transformative effect on care. It can be used at the national or sub-national level. The Scorecard is intended to be used by civil society, government and academia alike.
Care work, paid, unpaid or underpaid, is a critical social and economic good. There is a need to place it at the core of all policy decisions and investments in development work, as well as across institutions. The Care-Responsiveness Barometer has been developed as a guiding tool for all institutions to plan, measure and improve the care-responsiveness of their work.
This policy brief outlines why unpaid care work is a critical development, economic and gender equality issue for Kenya. It draws on two sets of evidence from Oxfam’s Women’s Economic Empowerment and Care (WE-Care) programme, which explore the impact of women and girls’ heavy and unequal unpaid care responsibilities both before and during COVID-19.
This overview document aims to highlight the approaches taken and lessons learned on unpaid care that Oxfam has implemented in collaboration with partners in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia.
This toolkit provides guidance on using Oxfam’s Household Care Survey (HCS) methodology, which was developed by Oxfam as part of the WE-Care initiative to transform the provision of unpaid care and domestic work (UCDW).
