Transcript Innovations in sources of funding

Equal sharing of responsibilities
between women and men
including care-giving in the
context of HIV/AIDS
“What’s for dinner?”
UN responded to the age-old tale
UN has long recognized the unequal sharing of responsibilities as
a women’s issue:
1994 – ICPD – full participation and partnership of women and men
in productive and reproductive life, including shared
responsibilities for the care and nurturing of children and
maintenance of the household
1995- FWCW – girls and young women expected to manage education
and domestic duties; under-value of women’s unpaid work
1995 – Social Summit – shared responsibility for older family members
and men’s responsibility in responsible parenthood and sexual
and reproductive behaviour
2007 – CSW – discrimination and violence against girls in HIV/AIDS
epidemic, girls heading households and caring for orphans
“Your turn to feed the baby tonight”
So what’s new?
Recent developments:
1. Urgency of the HIV/AIDS epidemic-Home Based Care (HBC)
in HIV/AIDS care-giving as major policy
2. Persistance of unequal distribution of responsibilities although
economic development may improve
3. Low fertility rates - women want fewer or no
children – e.g. Japan, Korea, Iceland
4. Search for best practices especially related to role of men
5. Advances in research and policy evaluation of care regime
and Time Use studies
What is the scope of the problem?
From Nancy, Folbre “What is She Worth? How to Value (or Not to Value) a Woman’s Life”
If a man shares a small umbrella with his wife in a bad
storm, they both still get wet – poverty matters
● Not just about getting men to share space—focus on
relationship between micro and macro-economic and social
policies to reduce poverty, improve infrastructure and social
services
● Not enough to change policies in social sector - the care
economy such as paternal leave or flexible hours; must
involve changes in values and cultural norms about
“women’s work.”
● Not just more economic growth – the goal should not be to
free women for the labor market. Rather policies must
contribute to their freedoms and human rights and support
equal citizenship
MICRO-level and household
Power relations – Who decides?
-Equal responsibility and sharing of decision-making,
flexibility in role sharing
-Separate but “equal”-Women control the purse strings and
men
bring home the bacon
-Unequal power relations – women’s roles defined by male
dominance norms and male privilege in the household
Violence and insecurity– threat or actual, physical or
mental, economic or social insecurity
punishes girls and women who rebel
Macro-level and globalization
Gendered division of labor based on stereotypes – e.g. rural
women’s work (fuel, water, transplanting, weeding, care for
children and animals) vs. men’s (plowing with animals,
marketing)
Economic stress and instability leads to cuts in social services –
burden falls on household to provide unpaid services – e.g.
HBC.
Poor countries cannot invest in labor-saving technologies,
infrastructure improvements like water and roads, cheap
clean fuel
Globalization of care economy – ethnic and migrant women,
including girls support care “deficit”; vulnerable to sexual
exploitation, low wages and few social securities
Why is it important?
From Nancy, Folbre “What is She Worth? How to Value (or Not to Value) a Woman’s Life”
Impact on women and girls’
personal and public life
Girls’ pulled out of school to care for HIV/AIDS patients
Women’s labor force participation compromised because of
incompatibility between family and work
-informal sector work
-home-based and part-time work
-little protection from labor laws
-lowered social security or health insurance
The time burden

In Japan, only 7.6% couples reported
sharing responsibilities feeding children
versus 19.6 % in Thailand and 29.6% in
Sweden
Economic and social costs
Invisibility - Women’s low paid or unpaid work is
unaccounted for in
National statistics – therefore value is not returned
Life-cycle vulnerability – insecurity for girls withdrawn from
school; women in old age with no pension
Psychological and physical stresses on family – HIV/AIDS;
poverty with loss
of women’s wages, debt,
Resources
“The NGO CSW/NY
guide to
what women want”
NY Times best seller in 2010
UN/DAW Expert Group Meeting
final report and all papers available
at:
http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/egm/equals
haring/egm_equalsharing.htm
Nancy Folbre’s caretalk blog
http://blogs.umass.edu/folbre