Policies need to address the rising need for care and to ensure decent work in the care economy of Asia.
At present, care work and therefore also domestic work are unrecognized and undervalued. Furthermore, in the future domestic workers are expected to face increasing vulnerability, despite the predicted rise in demand due to demographic change in Asia.
According to the International Labour Organization, so far there have only been inadequate policy responses to the rising demand in care work and there are no solutions to the looming global care crisis. Policies need to address the rising need for care, and challenge the huge difference between women’s and men’s care responsibilities. Women perform 76.2 per cent of total hours of unpaid care work, more than three times as much as men. If attitudes towards the gender division of care work do not change and women’s care-giving roles in families remain central, the value and recognition of paid and unpaid care work is unlikely to increase (link)
Herni Ramdlaningrum is a programme manager at the Indonesian welfare organization Prakarsa, and Desintha Dwi Asriani is a PhD candidate in Department of Women’s Studies at Ewha Womans University Seoul. They are both part of Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung's network dealing with women and the future of work in Asia. They wrote a <link news examining-womens-roles-in-the-future-of-work-in-indonesia external-link>research paper on the future of work in Indonesia and are particularly interested in how care work is affected. Around this year's World Day for Decent Work, which focuses on “Investing in care for gender equality,” the two researchers explain their vision of the future of care work.
DA: For women in Indonesia, challenges remain for those doing domestic and care work, paid as well as unpaid. There are currently no regulations in place to support women who are employed in domestic care work in the same way as other professions such as doctors or office workers. Social protection benefits are not available and domestic workers are not seen as participating in decent work. Women who undertake unpaid care work or fulfil traditional roles in the home are prevented from entering the workforce, which contributes to the ever-growing gender inequality. Domestic work is a necessity in society, it is required for those who are vulnerable such as the sick, older persons, children, and people with disabilities. Especially since it is such a necessity, care work should be a recognized profession with the same entitlements as other paid employment.
HR: Three main players are the most important for economic justice and labour issues in Asia, and Indonesia: labour unions, non-governmental organizations, and feminist and women’s groups. Within these organizations it is important to ensure women can take part in discussions and decision-making and to consider how far unpaid care work obligations prevent women from joining the fora in which these debates and decisions are made. I recently attended the PSI Asia Pacific Congress and it was good to see that the question of how equal participation could be improved was taken very seriously. These players need to advocate for the recognition of care work towards policymakers in a way that makes them realize that society at large will benefit from care work being paid and recognized, with social protection. Gender equality is a worthy goal in itself, but the benefits for all parts of society need to be made more apparent, it seems.
DA: Women need more space to participate in the workforce. The obstacles and underlying reasons that hinder women from doing so need to be analysed, and the transformation from unpaid care work to recognized decent employment should be enabled. Traditional gender roles that place women into the domestic sphere and associated care work as naturally female areas are core issues that make it difficult to increase the value and recognition of care work. Education and economic empowerment are crucial challenges to be tackled as well.
Support systems, such as social protection, health care, pension, childcare services and proper facilities, need to be developed to allow women to participate in the workforce, expanding their capabilities and opportunities to achieve gender equality.
HR: For women who undertake unpaid care work, that work becomes recognized paid employment with the same social protection benefits as other decent employment sectors. Women should have the ability to choose the work they desire, including care work, which would be the case if the latter were recognized as decent paid employment. Care work should also be redistributed in the household, so it is not seen as work that only holds women back.
DA: Future adaptation with technology should also be considered, with any technological advancements taking into consideration the rights and freedoms of women who undertake paid care work. Technology should empower and benefit everyone. It should not be a tool to save time on one household chore only to free up the woman in the house for another chore.
###
For more information on the work of FES <link our-work gender-and-social-justice external-link-internal-icon>visit the dedicated page on this website and <link about contact external-link-internal-icon>contact the FES Office for Regional Cooperation in Asia.
Human survival requires care work, yet paid and unpaid care work still lack recognition. An FES working group on the future of the care economy has…
FES partners address the emerging care crisis and think of innovations in Asia.
A discussion about women and the future of work in Indonesia.
The technological changes sweeping the world of work have particular implications for women. Specialists from across Asia have selected two areas to…
Ageing populations, technology advancements, climate change and the rise of non-standard jobs complicate further the grim outlook of the labour market…
Trade unions are developing strategies to address the harm a new generation of trade agreements may have on workers and access to public services in…
Bringing together the work of our offices in the region, we provide you with the latest news on current debates, insightful research and innovative visual outputs on geopolitics, climate and energy, gender justice, trade unions and social-ecological transformation.
In the face of a growing climate crisis, the military industry is promoting "eco-friendly" weapons and technologies, but are these innovations truly... More
Vietnam’s rapid urbanization is bringing both opportunities and challenges. Among the most significant challenges is the preservation of cultural... More
Listening to the voice of youth for a just energy transition has never been this crucial before! In August 2024, the Regional Communications... More
This site uses third-party website tracking technologies to provide and continually improve our services, and to display advertisements according to users' interests. I agree and may revoke or change my consent at any time with effect for the future.
These technologies are required to activate the core functionality of the website.
This is an self hosted web analytics platform.
Data Purposes
This list represents the purposes of the data collection and processing.
Technologies Used
Data Collected
This list represents all (personal) data that is collected by or through the use of this service.
Legal Basis
In the following the required legal basis for the processing of data is listed.
Retention Period
The retention period is the time span the collected data is saved for the processing purposes. The data needs to be deleted as soon as it is no longer needed for the stated processing purposes.
The data will be deleted as soon as they are no longer needed for the processing purposes.
These technologies enable us to analyse the use of the website in order to measure and improve performance.
This is a video player service.
Processing Company
Google Ireland Limited
Google Building Gordon House, 4 Barrow St, Dublin, D04 E5W5, Ireland
Location of Processing
European Union
Data Recipients
Data Protection Officer of Processing Company
Below you can find the email address of the data protection officer of the processing company.
https://support.google.com/policies/contact/general_privacy_form
Transfer to Third Countries
This service may forward the collected data to a different country. Please note that this service might transfer the data to a country without the required data protection standards. If the data is transferred to the USA, there is a risk that your data can be processed by US authorities, for control and surveillance measures, possibly without legal remedies. Below you can find a list of countries to which the data is being transferred. For more information regarding safeguards please refer to the website provider’s privacy policy or contact the website provider directly.
Worldwide
Click here to read the privacy policy of the data processor
https://policies.google.com/privacy?hl=en
Click here to opt out from this processor across all domains
https://safety.google/privacy/privacy-controls/
Click here to read the cookie policy of the data processor
https://policies.google.com/technologies/cookies?hl=en
Storage Information
Below you can see the longest potential duration for storage on a device, as set when using the cookie method of storage and if there are any other methods used.
This service uses different means of storing information on a user’s device as listed below.
This cookie stores your preferences and other information, in particular preferred language, how many search results you wish to be shown on your page, and whether or not you wish to have Google’s SafeSearch filter turned on.
This cookie measures your bandwidth to determine whether you get the new player interface or the old.
This cookie increments the views counter on the YouTube video.
This is set on pages with embedded YouTube video.
This is a service for displaying video content.
Vimeo LLC
555 West 18th Street, New York, New York 10011, United States of America
United States of America
Privacy(at)vimeo.com
https://vimeo.com/privacy
https://vimeo.com/cookie_policy
This cookie is used in conjunction with a video player. If the visitor is interrupted while viewing video content, the cookie remembers where to start the video when the visitor reloads the video.
An indicator of if the visitor has ever logged in.
Registers a unique ID that is used by Vimeo.
Saves the user's preferences when playing embedded videos from Vimeo.
Set after a user's first upload.
This is an integrated map service.
Gordon House, 4 Barrow St, Dublin 4, Ireland
https://support.google.com/policies/troubleshooter/7575787?hl=en
United States of America,Singapore,Taiwan,Chile
http://www.google.com/intl/de/policies/privacy/
