Valuing Care in Stimulating Growth and Ensuring Gender and Social Justice
Event Title: Valuing Care in Stimulating Growth and Ensuring Gender and Social Justice
Event date: November 22, 2023, 8:00 am – 9:30 am EST (6.30pm to 8pm IST)
Venue: Virtual (Zoom)
Organizers: Business, Enterprise, and Employment Support (BEES) for Women in South Asia Network and the World Bank
Objective
Globally, the need for care services is high. Worldwide, 43 percent of all children below primary-school-entry age—350 million children—need childcare but do not have access to it. The need for care services is intensifying with an aging population, rising chronic health conditions, growing number of dual-income households, and increasing youth migration. This places greater importance on professions such as healthcare, eldercare, childcare, and home services, highlighting the critical role of caregivers in supporting the well-being of individuals and families.
The COVID-19 pandemic has brought us close to the realities of our lives, leading to a heightened awareness of the value of care work and the growing recognition that investing in the care economy is essential for both social stability and economic growth. However, despite the growing recognition of the importance of care work and the care economy, unpaid care work continues to be perceived as "non-economic," unaccounted, and invisible. ILO estimates show that, when valued at minimum wage, unpaid domestic and care work totals $11 trillion, equivalent to 9 percent of the global Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The efforts to recognize and integrate the care economy fully into economic structures need a regular valuation of unpaid domestic and care work as a part of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), investment in the care infrastructure, implementation of inclusive policies that also support work-life balance and challenging conventional "economic structure" and gender biases in the system.
On November 22, 2023, this webinar will discuss unpaid care work in stimulating growth and ensuring social justice in a 90-minute session with a broader discussion on: the measurement and valuation of unpaid care work by shifting away from the conventional economic structure and policy changes in recognition of care work and promoting the integration of care work in the broader development framework.
Target audience and participants
All stakeholders directly and indirectly working on care economy are targeted to attend this webinar. This includes government officials from the relevant ministries, policy makers, think tanks, practitioners, grassroots women producers and entrepreneurs, networks and alliances, and academicians. The endeavor is to include participation from all SAARC member states and people from the rest of the globe.
Invited Panelists for the Webinar
- Ms. Reema Nanavaty, Director, SEWA and Advisor, BEES Network
- Ms. Laura Rawlings, Lead Economist, World Bank
- Ms. Joni Simpson, Senior Specialist, ILO
- Dr. Bina Pradhan, Senior Advisor, Federation of Business & Professional Women, Nepal and Member, BEES Network
- SEWA sisters’ experience sharing
Bios of the Invited Panelists
Reema Nanavaty has been working with the SEWA since over 36 years expanding its membership to over 2.5 million members, making it the single largest union of informal sector women workers.
Reema facilitated rebuilding lives and livelihoods of 60000 earthquake affected rural women and 40000 riot-affected members. She is leading the rehabilitation programs in Afghanistan, training over 5000 Afghani women on different Livelihood skills and facilitating them in setting-up their own local Association. Similarly, she has also led the rehabilitation program for war-affected widows in Srilanka; providing over 6000 women with vocational training in rural livelihood security.
Reema oversees 4813 self-help groups (SHG), 160 co-operatives and 15 economic federations, pan India including 18 states, and also in 7 South-Asian countries, focusing on women’s economic empowerment by building women owned enterprises, building women led supply chains, introducing modern ICT-based tools and facilitating Green-Energy initiatives and livelihoods.
She was honored by Padma Shri (the fourth-highest civilian award in the Republic of India) for her contribution in area of Social Services in 2013. She is currently the member of the Advisory Council on Gender of the World Bank Group.
Reema Nanavaty was invited to the International Labour Organization’s High Level Global Commission on Future of Work as the only member representing the informal sector workers, women workers, self-employed workers and the rural workers’ union in the entire commission. She was also invited as a member of the working group for the UN High-level Dialogue on Energy and as a Gender lead in the Working group for the UN's Food System Summit, both convened by UN General Secretary in the UNGA, Sep 2021. Reema was also one of the only worker’s representative invited to speak alongside UN secretary General Antonio Gueteras in the Official Opening Ceremony of the UN’s Food Systems Summit 2021. She is also a member of the Advisory committee of World Bank on Gender.
Laura B. Rawlings is a Lead Economist in the World Bank’s Gender Group, Laura B. Rawlings spearheads strategy and analytical work as part of the global effort to promote gender equality and women’s empowerment.
In her career, Laura has led numerous project and research initiatives in the areas of social protection, early childhood development and behavioral incentives. She has worked as the Lead Economist for the Human Capital Project, Team Leader of the World Bank’s Social Protection and Labor Strategy, Manager of the Strategic Impact Evaluation Fund (SIEF) and Sector Leader for Human Development in Central America. She has published numerous books and articles in the fields of evaluation and human development. Laura is a member of the Global Reference Group for Children Affected by COVID-19 and an adjunct professor in Georgetown University’s Global Human Development program.
As a Gender and non-discrimination Specialist, Joni Simpson provides policy analysis, technical guidance and support on gender equality and inclusion in the world of work in East and South East Asia and the Pacific. This includes technical guidance on care economy, equal opportunity, pay equity, ending violence and harassment and discrimination at work, and diversity inclusion (persons with disabilities – including through the ILO Global Business and Disability Network, indigenous persons, LGBTIQ persons, and persons living with HIV) and through the promotion of key gender equality and inclusion International Labour Standards. In addition, she promotes women’s entrepreneurship and economic empowerment and leadership approaches to ILO constituents and partners.
Previously, Joni was ILO’s Global Coordinator & Specialist in Women’s Entrepreneurship Development and Entrepreneurship Education. She is the co-founder of the Women@ILO network. She holds a Master's degree in Cultural anthropology and a Bachelor’s in Education.
In addition to her work at the ILO, Joni has over ten years of experience in women-centred Community Economic Development and Community Credit, building accessible and gender-responsive programmes and policies for Entrepreneurship Development and financial inclusion. Prior to joining the ILO, she headed a Women’s Enterprise Center and social purpose enterprise in Canada. She has lived and worked in the South East Asia, the Middle East, Europe and North America. She has initiated several initiatives for women’s economic empowerment and women’s leadership.
Bina Pradhan is a feminist economist with a Ph.D. from Cornell University and a multidisciplinary background in economics, rural sociology, gender studies, anthropology, and international development. She is an independent researcher and a Fulbright New Century Scholar (2009/10) affiliated with the Beatrice Bean Research Group (BBRG), a critical feminist research center at Berkley University. Currently, she is affiliated with the Federation of Business and Professional Women, Nepal (FBPWN), working for gender equality and women's empowerment through entrepreneurship development and trade.
As Adviser to the Federation, Bina Pradhan collaborates on enterprise development, trade promotion, post-earthquake community reconstruction, sustainable livelihoods for women in remote and rural Nepal, as well as in post COVID recovery and advancement of women’s micro and small enterprises.
With extensive experience in plan and policy development, program management, monitoring and evaluation, capacity development, and gender management systems in South, Central, and West Asia, she served as a Socio-cultural and Operations Research Adviser in UNFPA's Country Technical Services Team for South and West Asia (SAWA) from 1998 to 2003/4.
Pradhan is a pioneering researcher in Nepal leading the groundbreaking study on The Status of Women in Nepalcontributing to the methodology of the study, documentation and valuation of paid and unpaid care work and women's contributions to the household economy. This study led her to open the first ever action-oriented research center on women as NGO in Nepal, Center for Women and Development (CWD), to promote gender equality and women’s right to work. Her current research focuses on Gender and Macroeconomics utilizing three generations of Nepal Labor Force Surveys (NLFS 1998/9, 2008/9 and 2017) focusing on paid and unpaid care work.
About the Organizers
BEES Network
The Business, Enterprise and Employment Support (BEES) Network for Women in South Asia, brings together poor and marginalized women from the eight SAARC members states, with an outreach to 23+ million households. Set up as an informal network in 2011, by the World Bank, the BEES Network was registered as a Company limited by Guarantee, in 2019, in Sri Lanka. Currently, there are fifteen members in the network, which work on all aspects of women’s economic empowerment. The BEES Network’s Regional Knowledge Hub intends to share the deep expertise and experience of its members through a series of webinars (and other modes of dissemination), with all relevant stakeholders, based on the BEES’ Strategic Vision and Plan for South Asia.
World Bank
World Bank Gender Strategy 2024 – 2030: Accelerate Gender Equality for a Sustainable, Resilient and Inclusive Future
World Bank Gender Strategy 2024 – 2030: Thematic Note on Care - Addressing Care to Accelerate Equality
https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/entities/publication/4ec36a0c-ced2-4826-9e4f-51ec66eec7bf
Learn more about the WBG Invest in Childcare Initiative:
Learn about the Gender Group's Gender Equality and Development initiative +10 #AccelerateEquality:
https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/gender/brief/gender-equality-at-a-crossroads
Learn about the Gender Group's Gender Data Portal:
Watch Webinar Recording Here
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