Rebuilding the Social Organisation of Care: A Key to Dismantling Womxn's Poverty

This parallel event to the UNCSW68 will be held on 11 March 2024, 2:30 pm Tillman Chapel, 1st Floor, CCUN

Background

In March 2021, in the context of the UNCSW61, a group of organisations from the feminist, trade union, tax justice, and human rights movements launched the Rebuilding the Social Organisation of Care Manifesto, as an alternative way out of the global care crisis unleashed by the COVID-19 pandemic.  In 2022, ESCR-Net stated that  A New Social Pact on Care is Urgent and in 2023, IDWF was part of the No Care Economies without Domestic Workers Manifesto, initiatives that widely agreed on the critical role of decent work for care workers and the public responsibility of States in financing, regulating, and providing care public services and systems. 

Today, global governance is set to address poverty, strengthen institutions and financing with a gender perspective at the next 68th session of the CSW. It would be impossible to talk about women's poverty and dismantling it without touching on the unjust social organisation of care in societies built on the coloniality of power and the intersectionality of women's labour extraction.

Likewise, it becomes illusory to speak of care as a common and public good at the service of society, without recognising the current trend towards its commodification, monetisation, financialisation and privatisation. These trends aim to turn care into a lucrative asset of private interest, facilitated by the capture of states in favor of capitalist accumulation.

A joint study by Juan Pablo Bohoslavsky and Lena Lavinas entitled “Gender Bonds: Do they leverage or threaten women’s rights?“, presented to the experts meeting in advance of UNCSW68, confirmed the financialisation trend. It points out that this form of gender bonds operates under the mechanism of a so-called sovereign debt, in which governments are captured for the financing of their gender equality policies, including care.

In this context, PSI, DAWN, ActionAid, OXFAM, CESR, GI-ESCR, GATJ, TJN, Womankind, FEMNET, IDWF, and ESCR-Net have joined forces to call on governments to:

• Reveal the forces and private interests that are driving gender equality financing, including care and forcing privatisation.

• Describe how the obligations-based approach of the international economic system should look to deliver and materialise the human right to care

• Show how inclusive and more democratic global tax cooperation can contribute to  the fulfillment of women’s rights at all levels.

• Mainstream care-centered policies into climate action.

• Highlight gender-transformative quality public care systems and social protection as main drivers of real economic change for womxn.

Agenda & Speakers