Addressing The Care Gap In Africa

And The Invisibility Of The Care Crisis Across The Continent

Yesterday, I connected with our friends at News Central TV to discuss the care gap in Africa and the need to address this gap for gender, social, and economic progress. Care work powers all work, yet care work is not recognized as an economic activity of value. Women and men do 16.4 billion hours of unpaid care work every single day. Around 76% of this is undertaken by women, with 606 million women of working age performing unpaid care on a full-time basis. The invisibility of care work in the formal economy has led to it acting as a hidden subsidy to the market economy. A staggering sixty-five per cent of women’s working hours are unpaid every week and excluded from official measures of economic activity. This time and income poverty bears serious consequences to women’s health, economic, and political power, as well as repercussions to healthy masculinity and men’s wellbeing. Closing the care gap will require redistribution of care work to men, markets, government, and institutions. It will require recognizing the value of care, and shifting cultural narratives and norms around girls and women solely responsible for this work. It is also time for our GDP to count and capture evidence from all types of economic activities - both paid and unpaid.

I talk about this and more on the JASIRI show on News Central TV. We discuss the need for men to step into care, and how care work performed by women fuels resentment towards men and society.

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The Care Gap is written by Blessing Oyeleye Adesiyan, Founder & Chief Care Economist at Caring Africa on a mission to close the global care gap for families, workplaces, and economies through research, content, policy, and technology.