Women bear disproportionate responsibility for unpaid care work, they devote 1 to 3 hours more a day to housework than men and 2 to 10 times the amount of time a day to care (for children, elderly, and the sick). Why We Care about Care is an online moderated course that aims to provide a global perspective on Care by enhancing awareness, knowledge and understanding on the critical place Care occupies in development, while simultaneously providing skills and tools for analyzing and identifying types of interventions and policies for a fair and equal social organization of Care to advance human development, gender equality and women’s empowerment. The course is offered every year by the UN Women Training Centre.

The Booklet Why we care about care? A collection of essays on Care Economy came about within the framework of the learning activities implemented by the UN Women Training Centre with the objective of developing a body of work on the ‘Care Economy.’ The goal is to develop a more in-depth knowledge of the reality today of care-giving and care-receiving, how it is linked to the inequality between men and women, and how it fits into the current global development model.

This Booklet showcases 12 essays (in English and Spanish) by course participants from around the world from 2014-2016. The essays were selected based on a set of criteria including innovation, empirical evidence, writing quality, theoretical relevance and geographical representation. The essays serve to show the different realities and complexities associated with care issues in the following contexts:

• The Relationship between Labor Policies and Care. Evaluation of the potential impact of the Italian labor market reform on the care system and gender equality, by Erica Aloé
• Making Women’s Unpaid Care-Work in Conflict and Post-Conflict Situations Count, by Fatma Osman Ibnouf (Sudan)
• The Care Crisis and Migrant Domestic Workers in Hong Kong, by Fish Ip
• Migrant Elder Care Workers in the UK: A complex and increasingly significant global care chain, by Nicola Chanamuto
• How ‘Care-ful’ are the Sustainable Development Goals?, by Sudeshna Sengupta (India)
• Defining the Complex Boundaries between Consenting Work and Forced Work in Cameroon, by Sydoine Claire Matsinkou Tenefosso
• Cuidados encerrados: niños y niñas menores de tres años viviendo con sus madres en una prisión femenina de Lima-Perú (Locked Care, 3-year old Boys and Girls living with their mother’s at a women’s prisión in Lima, Peru, by Ana Paula Méndez Cosamalón
• Espacios, Tecnologías y Cuidados: cómo promover la autonomía Space, Technology and Care: How to promote autonomy), by Ana Rodríguez Ruano
• ¿Es posible hablar de una sustentabilidad reproductiva?: apuntes para el diseño de una caja de herramientas en las experiencias de economía social (Is It Posible to Talk about Reproductive Sustainability? Notes for the design of a toolkit on social economy experiences), by Florencia Partenio
• El debate inacabado sobre la crisis de los cuidados (The Unfinished Debate on the Care Crisis), by Gilda Ceballos Angulo
• Apuntes para una aproximación conceptual al cuidado desde la perspectiva de la antropología (Notes for a conceptual approach to Care from the perspective of Anthropology), by Patricio Dobrée
• Las defensoras y los cuidados (Advocates and Care), by Susana García Montano

Click here to access the full collection of essays.