Care Inequalities

It took us a global pandemic to realise that we depend on care. But despite all the clapping from the balconies, care workers continue to work in precarious and vulnerable conditions. In the EU, carers earn on average 65% of the national average employee income. Who are the ones at the forefront? 70% of health and social carers are WOMEN.Women suffer from a severe lack of recognition of their paid and unpaid care work. Most care work is not even paid at all. The essential everyday tasks in our homes, performed by an overwhelming majority of women, remain unacknowledged. Our economies, our lives, cannot go on forgetting that paid and unpaid caregivers are the ones that cover our most basic needs. We need to move away from a profit-driven model of growth to a care-driven model.
FEPS, together with its member foundations, has been intensively working since November 2019 to monitor the EU gender equality policy agenda through a progressive lens focusing particularly on its care dimensions.