CARE WORK AND
THE ECONOMY
Advancing policy solutions with
gender-aware macroeconomic models
A Bold Research Agenda
Care Work and the Economy is striving to reduce gender gaps in economic outcomes and enhance gender equality by illuminating and properly valuing the broader economic and social contributions of caregivers and integrating care in macroeconomic policymaking toolkits. We work to provide policymakers and advocacy groups with gender-aware data and analytical tools needed to support, in this era of demographic shifts and economic change, creative policy solutions to chronic public underinvestment in care provisioning and infrastructures and the constraints care work places on women’s life and employment choices.
Policies to Advance Equity
Making care work visible and integrating care and other gendered behaviors into tools policymakers use will lead to better solutions for women and more inclusive growth. Despite considerable progress, women’s choices around caregiving and employment remain constrained. Policymakers need better data on care work and gender-aware analytic tools that illustrate how economic and social policies affect men and women differently to create an enabling environment for the realization of women’s rights.
Meet our Community
We are building a broad network of researchers and policymakers interested in enhancing the methods and tools used for exploring, measuring, and analyzing policies related to care work. We engage economists, sociologists, demographers, gender and development scholars, and others to advance the assessment of care work and a fuller recognition of gender in planning and practice.
THE LATEST
A Gender Lens on COVID-19: Investing in Nurses and Other Frontline Health Workers to Improve Health SystemsContributed by Megan O’Donnell Assistant Director, Gender Program and Senior Policy Analyst at Center for Global Development & Samantha Rick Former deputy director, Frontline Health Workers Coalition In a recent CGD blog post, Megan highlighted seven areas where long-run, gender-responsive thinking can help to insulate against the consequences of pandemics like COVID-19 and their disproportionate impacts on women and girls. HereREAD MORE ❯
How Will COVID-19 Affect Women and Girls in Low- and Middle-Income Countries?Contributed by David Evans, senior fellow at the Center for Global Development, working on education, health, and social safety nets Policymakers should be thinking—and worried—about how COVID-19 is expected to disproportionately affect women and girls. Gender inequality can come into even starker focus in the context of health emergencies. With COVID-19 continuing to spread, whatREAD MORE ❯
The Homemade Value-Added Stabilizer“Shelter in place” mandates in the early stages of the U.S. Covid-19 pandemic required many people to stay home, cook their own meals, school their own children, and entertain themselves. Unpaid work served not only as a social safety net, but also as an automatic stabilizer. While it didn’t dampen fluctuations in official Gross Domestic Product,READ MORE ❯
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