Insights

Have you ever filled out a form that asks if you are:

• Working full-time
• Working part-time
• Looking for work
• Studying full-time
• Studying part-time

Chances are, you have. While it’s clear this kind of question is designed to capture the contribution you’re making to the economy, it fails to account for or even recognise other ways in which people – particularly women – contribute value to society.

Where are the options to select ‘home duties’, ‘caring for others’, ‘volunteering’ or even ‘caring for myself’?

This question also neglects what it can take for people to be ‘job ready’, to participate in waged work or to study. We know from our conversations with our clients and their stakeholders that the path to these traditional forms of economic participation often needs to begin with healing from trauma, caring for oneself, or being taken care of by others.

When we omit these crucial, often unpaid contributions, we render these kinds of work and care invisible, and ascribe them a value of zero. How then, can we rectify this, to make visible and account for the value of the care economy?

The Victorian Government’s Gender Equality Strategy, published in 2016, outlines that Victorian women undertake nearly twice as much unpaid work than men – and this imbalance was only reinforced in 2020. Recent research from the Monash Gender and Family Violence Prevention Centre highlighted that ‘the economic consequences of the coronavirus pandemic, or the “she-cession”, together with increased caring and housing school responsibilities […] led many commentators and researchers to describe women as the “shock absorbers” of the COVID-19 pandemic’. The Grattan Institute has also described how ‘remote learning and the loss of formal and informal childcare and household support services led to a big rise in unpaid work during the lockdowns. This unpaid work was disproportionately borne by women, and many found it impossible to juggle with their existing paid work commitments.’

remote learning and the loss of formal and informal childcare and household support services led to a big rise in unpaid work during the lockdowns. This unpaid work was disproportionately borne by women …

Among the founding reforms set out by the Gender Equality Strategy was an imperative to ‘address the economic dimensions of gender equality’, and the commitment to ‘develop a model for valuing unpaid work and care and its impact on the Victorian economy.’ The Victorian Office for Women subsequently commissioned Deloitte Access Economics to develop this model in 2018. Using a replacement cost method; that is, the cost of ‘buying’ an equivalent amount of work and care from the market, Deloitte found that unpaid work and care in Victoria – including household and domestic work, caring for the ill, disabled and elderly, caring for children and volunteer work – was worth $206 billion in 2017–18, or the equivalent of half of Victoria’s Gross State Product. This modelling demonstrates that by valuing, rather than overlooking, the unequal distribution of unpaid work and care, we can begin to better understand the cost borne and contribution made by women.

… unpaid work and care in Victoria – including household and domestic work, caring for the ill, disabled and elderly, caring for children and volunteer work – was worth $206 billion in 2017–18, or the equivalent of half of Victoria’s Gross State Product.

Paid care work, too, is systemically underpaid and undervalued, as has been emphasised by the COVID-19 pandemic. In July 2020, the 200,000 workers in the Australian childcare sector, 97 per cent of whom are women, were the first to lose access to the federally funded JobKeeper program. In its recent report for the NSW Council of Social Service, Equity Economics outlines that in the NSW social sector, in which four out of five workers are women, ‘low wages are a consistent issue [… and] workers often earn rates well below similar or lower skill levels in other professions.’ The wage gap in aged care, too – in which about 90 per cent of workers are women – was recently highlighted by the Aged Care Royal Commission, which recommended that ‘wage increases should be an explicit policy objective of aged care funding.’

At Think Impact, we understand and call attention to the care economy as fundamental to the healthy and cohesive functioning of our families and communities, and are continuing to evolve our approach to accounting for the value of unpaid work and care.

One of the projects we undertook in 2020 was a Social Return on Investment evaluation of a program delivered specifically by and to women, the majority of whom are also primary, unpaid caregivers to their families. Engaging with these women gave us a tangible opportunity to understand and honour value in all its forms, and crucially, to evidence the program’s contribution to women’s capacity to care for themselves and others. When asking women what they were able to focus on as a result of their involvement in the program, we included ‘care for my family’, ‘address my health and wellbeing’; ‘volunteer/provide unpaid help’ alongside the more conventional options of ‘take part in a course/qualification/education’, ‘look for work’ and ‘continue in my job’. 63 per cent of survey respondents (n=59) selected ‘care for my family’ in response to this question, and we used this result, in conjunction with the modelling undertaken by Deloitte Access Economics, to indicate the additional value of unpaid labour and care that this program created for the Victorian economy in 2020.

While it seems the tide is slowly turning (LinkedIn, for instance, recently announced that they will introduce 'stay-at-home' parenting options in profiles), we must continue to consolidate how we acknowledge care as work. So, when you’re next engaging your stakeholders or designing a survey, think about how you are being inclusive of the different ways in which people contribute value to society.