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
Microfinance and the Care EconomyFinancial inclusion has been adopted as a developmental strategy with the roll-back of the developmental state under the neoliberal policy regime. As a result, mainstream private finance has utilized microcredit schemes with increasing frequency, even though such schemes initially were touted almost exclusively as tools for gender-empowerment and poverty alleviation. The relatively low rates ofREAD MORE ❯
(More) Economic Lessons from the Great Recession of 2008The global financial crisis that began in 2008 resulted in the widespread destruction of jobs. Effects were felt disproportionately among subordinate racial groups and women. While mainstream analyses emphasize regulatory lapses in the financial sector as the principal factor triggering the crisis, the root causes run much deeper. Feminist and stratification economists have enlarged theREAD MORE ❯
Gendering Fiscal PolicyThe importance of public physical infrastructure in stimulating productivity and economic performance is embraced by most economists. However, there is less awareness that public spending in health, social care, education, and childcare should be considered as investment in social infrastructure. We therefore develop a feminist post-Keynesian/post-Kaleckian demand-led growth model to elucidate the impact of genderREAD MORE ❯
STAY CONNECTED