Fair share for health and care fact sheet

Overview

Health and care work supports human wellbeing, promotes economic prosperity and creates virtuous cycles of equity. Yet, it is vastly undervalued. This undervaluation is anchored in social attitudes towards caregiving and reproductive labour. Recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic offers an opportunity for a global reset that addresses the care crisis, reorients economies and invests in long-term social infrastructure to support universal wellbeing. Revaluing health and care work and those that deliver it is central to this agenda. This report lays out and quantifies critical Gender Value Gaps and demonstrates how health and care work is undervalued, why this is a gender equality issue, and what can be done about it. The primary target audience for this report is national authorities and intersectoral policy makers from all levels, as well as health and care workers, researchers, and activists.