Defending Dignity A Manual for National Human Rights Institutions on Monitoring Economic, Social and Cultural Rights UNPAID CARE WORK When taking a gender perspective, or tackling women’s rights issues, one important factor to take into account is unpaid care work. Unpaid care work includes the daily tasks of cooking, cleaning and caring (for children, ill people or elderly people) within the household. In many countries, especially in poor rural contexts, it also includes time-consuming and laborious tasks such as fetching fuel and water for domestic use. Statistics show that in all countries, this work is overwhelmingly performed by women. For example, the OECD has found that women in East Asia and the Pacific spend more than twice as much time on unpaid care work than men, and in South Asia women do more than 5 times as much as men. Many policy-makers ignore the issue of unpaid care work, essentially because they take it for granted. It seems ‘natural’ or ‘normal’ to them that this work takes place unsupported in the home, and that women do the vast majority of this work. However, this work should not be taken for granted: is it absolutely essential to every society and economy. It also has a huge impact on many women’s ability to enjoy their rights equally with men – especially women living in poverty. For example, because of the heavy and unequal burdens of unpaid care work they have less time to dedicate to paid work, education or training, to seek health care or care for themselves, or even to attend community meetings or run for office. Unpaid care work also negatively impacts on girls’ rights, as in many contexts girls are required to help with care work in the home (more so than their male siblings or relatives), often at the expense of their opportunities for education, study or play. When thinking about gender inequality, it is therefore crucial to pay attention to how care responsibilities are distributed and supported by men or the State (in the form of government services or subsidies for example). Some NHRIs have already focused on this issue: for example, the Australian Human Rights Commission published a report in 2013 called Investing in Care. A second crucial step is to have a clear sense of what concrete change you want your monitoring activity to achieve and how your monitoring activity can help make that change happen. Monitoring should always have a clearly articulated objective; it should pressure, persuade, educate or mobilize an audience. Audiences can either be: • Decision makers: those who have the power, either formally or informally, to make or block change • Pressure makers: those who have the power to influence or persuade decisions makers. Identifying your audience is discussed in more detail in Chapter 16. However, from the very start of your monitoring activity, it is important to have some of these questions in mind because it will help determine the most appropriate methodology to be adopted. 14