ALFP e-magazine issue 5: Gender Issues

Unpaid Care Work: Why Does It Matter Whose Work It Is?
Sepali Kottegoda (Sri Lanka)
Director of Programmes, Women and Media Collective / ALFP 2004 Fellow
The conditions of unpaid care work impact how unpaid carers enter and remain in paid work,and influence the working conditions of all care workers. This “unpaid care work–paid work–
paid care work circle” also affects gender inequalities in paid work outside the care economy
and has implications for gender equality within households as well as for women’s and men’sability to provide unpaid care work.1

Caring for household members. Well-being of the family. Putting food on the table. Washingclothes. Making ends meet. Looking after the young, the old and differently-abled family members.
These are everyday activities. These are always performed by someone or some people for someone
or some people. What we take as accepted norms and practices of everyday life in a household ora family are in fact deeply rooted in the fabric of “social norms.” One can ask, so what? This is
how it has been, how it should be and how it will be. Someone has to do these things, and someone
always does. The questions to ask (but often are not) are, by whom and why?
The issue here is the fact that the concept of “care” is not necessarily associated with “work.”“Care” is often conflated with notions of altruism or unselfishness and self-sacrifice rooted in thefamily and related to a gender division of labor where women are seen as the care givers. In
mainstream economics as well as in the social perceptions of persons, “work” is understood asactivity that brings in monetary income: “having a job,” “looking for or engaged in employment.”
There is no questioning or critiquing the social, economic and political factors that underlie theseemingly “natural” division of labor within the household and the family.
In the 19th century Friedrich Engels wrote The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, apioneering socialist exploration of women’s oppression within the family as the effect of theeconomic oppression of woman.2 Feminists in the 1980s honed in on the issue of women’s workand labor to critically look at ways in which the global capitalist market requirement for women’slabor for the production of goods falls short of recognizing the value of women’s reproductiveroles.3 By the end of the 1990s, there was more interest in developing national accounting processes
to measure time use in women’s household work. Feminist economists argued that these measurescontinued to exclude the social dimensions of unpaid care work within households. Others argued
that time-use methodologies must necessarily be formulated to specifically address these gaps forany meaningful change in policy on labor, social support programming and gender equality.41 ILO (2018), “Care Work and Care Jobs for the Future of Decent Work,” Geneva.
2 Sharon Smith, “Engels and the Origin of Women’s Oppression,” International Socialist Review, Issue 2, Fall

(1997).
3 Kate Young, Carole Wolkowits, and Roslyn McCullagh, Of Marriage and the Market: Women’s Subordination
Internationally and its Lessons, (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984).
4 Diane Elson, “Recognize, Reduce, and Redistribute Unpaid Care Work: How to Close the Gender Gap,” New
Labour Forum 26, no. 2 (2017): 52–61. The Murphey Institute. City University of New York.
© 2019 International House of Japan and Japan Foundation

ALFP e-magazine issue 5: Gender Issues

It is within these debates and discussions that I would like to bring in some dimensions of unpaid
care work in Sri Lanka which remain outside the mainstream economic discourse on policy.
To give a quick profile of some economic and social indicators in Sri Lanka, we have an estimatedpopulation of 21 million comprising 51% females and 49% males. We have a long record of stateprovision and extensive outreach of health and education services that are accessed by girls andboys, women and men.5 In 2012 the sex-ratio (the number of men per 100 women) in the total
population was 93.8 and in the population 60 years and above it was 79. By 2032 it is projectedthat this will change to 92 and 78 respectively.6 We have to recognize that Sri Lanka has an ageing
population which in the next two decades will comprise significantly more women than men. The
implication here is that there will be a large proportion of elderly women in households who will
be in need of care.
Sri Lanka offers a worthy example given its record of long years of free education and healthprograms. However, the labor force participation of women at 34.9 is almost half that of men(73.4).7 Out of an estimated 7.7 million persons categorized as “economically inactive” 74.3% are
women. The issue here is that 60.5% of women and 4.9% of men are found to be “engaged inhousework.”8
Herein lies a fundamental issue: what criteria and what values (social, economic and political) areembedded in (international definitions) of the concepts of “labor” and “work.” Why is it that work
done in the home centering on taking care of household members is not recognized for its
economic value? In addition, women who undertake some form of income-earning activities
whether in the formal or informal sector also are expected to and do undertake “housework” which
is not given economic value. The work undertaken by these women (and men) is also not factored
in when policy is directed towards economic development. Is it not time that a feminist discourse
is brought in to ensure that work both in the private and public sphere is valued? Is it not time toacknowledge that recognizing, reducing and redistributing unpaid care work is a must if we are tochallenge discriminatory gender norms and practices that impede effective policy making andimplementation for development for all?

The contents of this article reflect solely the opinions of the author.
5 Central Bank of Sri Lanka Annual Report 2018.
6 Indralal De Silva and Sunethra Perera, “Demographic Change and its Implications on the Labour Force in SriLanka,” University of Colombo (2014).
7 Sri Lanka Department of Census and Statistics (2019), Labour Force Survey First Quarter 2019. Colombo.
8 Sri Lanka Department of Census and Statistics (2019), Labour Force Survey Annual Report 2017. Colombo.
© 2019 International House of Japan and Japan Foundation