Every day, people around the world
spend 16 billion hours
on unpaid care work --
cooking for their families,
cleaning up after them,
caring for children and older relatives
and all the other routine household tasks.
These activities are happening all day,
at every hour, in every country
around the world.
But because many
don't get paid for this work,
most of us take it for granted.
[The Way We Work]
Care work is a catch-all term
for all the tasks and chores
that are done in service of other people.
Some care work is paid, like medicine,
nursing or being a nanny,
but a tremendous amount is done for free.
And this unpaid care work
is overwhelmingly done by women.
There have been so many
women in my own life
who provided both paid
and unpaid care work.
My mother and my grandmother before her.
Eswari, who was nursing
my grandmother in her final years.
Patricia, who cares for my children
when I travel for work.
And I've been an unpaid caregiver, too,
caring for my immediate family,
but also spending several months
caring for ailing friends, their children
and my dad in his last days.
I've come to realize that unpaid care work
makes all other work possible.
During the COVID pandemic,
with the closure of schools
and the strain on the health care system,
the amount of time spent on unpaid care
and domestic work doubled
for working parents.
This has been a disaster
for women around the world.
Compounding the stress
and pushing millions out of the paid
labor market altogether.
It set the clock back
on progress by decades.
But at the same time,
the pandemic also made care work visible.
It showed up in the background
of our Zoom calls
and in our need to limit overtime.
And so many workplaces
were able to integrate
and even celebrate this new reality.
Right now, we have
an incredible opportunity
to recognize the care work in our lives,
reframe it for ourselves
and build workplaces that are much
more accommodating of it.
And here's where we can start.
If you are someone providing care,
the biggest thing you can do is name it
for yourself and for others.
Care work.
It's not a distraction
if you're fitting it
around paid employment.
You're not "taking a break"
if you’re on sabbatical
caring for someone in need.
This is real, critical work
that can be exhausting,
frustrating and even boring.
Give yourself permission to feel
all of the emotions you'd feel
if the work came
accompanied by a paycheck.
And when you're talking
to your manager about it,
don't feel like you need to apologize.
Remember, this is a fact of life,
and be as explicit as you can
about your needs.
Do you need three months at home
or do you need Tuesday mornings
for a standing appointment?
As a caregiver,
it's also important to recognize
the skills that you gain doing this work.
There is so much involved
with giving care --
handling transport, logistics,
interpreting medical charts,
managing financials.
These are valuable skills
that are relevant
to all kinds of contexts.
So if you have a job, frame caregiving
to your colleagues that way.
And if you’re looking for paid work,
don't treat it as a big empty
gap in your life.
Put it on your CV and outline the skills
that you've gained from it.
Skills like multitasking,
project management or communication.
But of course it's not just on individuals
to change how the wider world
thinks about care work.
We need systemic change
from employers, too.
The biggest thing that employers can do
is to make space for employees
to talk about care work
without being penalized or seen
as less focused or dedicated.
Caregiving should be a topic
that's brought up early
when new employees
first start their training.
Workplaces should track and understand
the kind of care work
employees are responsible for
and what kind of policy changes
are needed to make their lives better
and more productive.
And employers should make sure
that caregivers aren't passed over
for key projects or promotions
just because of their duties at home.
Caregiving is such a fundamental
aspect of being human,
and yet it's so artificially cleansed
from our work lives.
Instead of treating it like a secret,
workplaces can bring it out into the open.
And of course, workplaces
need to offer flexibility
to accommodate the lived
realities of caregivers.
For employees who are parents,
in addition to parental leave,
this means allowing them time off
when kids are sick or home from school.
It means letting them establish
dark zones in their calendar
around school drop offs,
bath time, bedtime rituals
and respecting those boundaries.
It means offering remote work options.
For people caring for elders
or those who are sick or disabled,
this means giving them
reasonable amounts of leave.
It means building projects that are based
on milestones and deliverables,
rather than relying on frequent
meetings and check-ins alone.
It means being really flexible
about when and where the work gets done.
And workplaces often thrive as a result.
And one final point.
Care work is one of the fastest-growing
sectors of our economy.
As a result of a growing
and an aging population,
over two billion people in the world
will need care by 2030.
This means that the time is now to shift
the way we think about caring for them.
This aging population
is going to need support.
They're going to need new solutions.
This means innovations,
jobs, new industries.
And where many other
jobs are lost to automation,
the one job that we're so uniquely
good at as humans
is caring for other humans.