The UNRISD Project on the Political Economy of Paid

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The UNRISD Project on thePolitical Economy of
Paid Unpaid Care WorkThe South African
country study

• Francie Lund
• University of KwaZulu-Natal,
• and WIEGO network
• Working with
• Debbie Budlender
• Community Agency for Social Enquiry (CASE)
• Presentation at WIDe Conference,
• Basel, June 2009

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A granny in Durban, looking after grandchild
while working in a street market in the
traditional herbs and medicines sector
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UNRISD project in South Africa

• Holds the potential for
• Making more visible the links between economic
  and social policies
• Bringing the totality of womens work to the
  surface
• Seeing the links between paid and unpaid care
  work
• Through the combination of quantitative and
  qualitative research

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South Africa

• 48 million people
• Middle income country
• Steep poverty and inequality, with marked racial,
  gender-based and spatial features
• High unemployment rates

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Family/ household composition

• Of children under 17
• 35 percent live with both mother and father
• 40 percent live with mother not father
• 20 percent live with neither biological parent
• Of all households
• 35 percent comprised of children and middle
  generation but this is supposedly the norm
  of a nuclear family
• 21 percent have three or more generations present

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Burning problems and questions about care

• Apartheid legacy of disruption of family life
• High unemployment rates for women and for men,
  and especially for women
• Exceptionally high HIVAIDS rates
• SO
• What types of intervention could address the
  growing needs for care, especially of all
  children, and of middle generation adults with
  HIVAIDS?

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How do different agencies react and cope
households

• No evidence of withdrawal of girl children from
  school
• Extended families absorb kin children and sick
  people
• Positive role of state pension for elderly people

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The state

• Unconditional and non-contributory cash
  transfers Old Age Pension (OAP) and to a lesser
  extent the Disability Grant, allow care, shape
  care, enable younger women to go and seek work,
  keep girl children in school for longer
• Child Support Grant too small to be able to see
  impact on care
• ARV therapy provision now received by about 700
  000 people is shaping care for people with
  AIDS, by household members, and by Home Based
  Care workers also by nurses and other paid
  carers

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The market

• Nurses move from government to private sector
  and emigrate to UK, Australia, New Zealand,
  Canada
• Nurses from SADC and elsewhere immigrate to South
  Africa
• Growth in private market for low paid care
• Are domestic workers (largely African women)
  doing more skilled care work, with no recognition
  or compensation?

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International agencies

• HIVAIDS may be crowding out funding for other
  health issues
• Much positive support for cash transfers how
  long will this last? May last longer because of
  global financial crisis?
• Much focus on child headed households and human
  trafficking these are problems, but may not be
  priority in terms of intensity

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Non governmental organisations (NGOs)Community
based organisations (CBOs)Faith based
organisations (FBOs)

• Absolutely crucial formal and informal support to
  households, much of it unrecognised and
  unregistered
• Incoherent government policy as to where they
  fall in the continuum of care and how to
  support them
• A wider range of NGOs, CBOs and FBOs now receive
  government subsidies to provide HBC. A minority
  have clear programmes and support structures for
  the HBCs.

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Household-based care programmes

• Wide variety of interventions, mainly in
  departments of health, and of social development
• On the whole ungendered, with community
  standing for women doing unpaid care work
• Continuum of care community has no clear
  policy for support compare with MUCH poorer
  African countries such as Uganda and Tanzania
  where there is more active support for community
  workers and volunteers
• HBC programme in public works programme
• Appalling rates of pay (just over a dollar a
  day), and care workers get paid much less than
  men (and some women) get paid in non-care public
  works programmes (Budlender and Parenzee)
• No clear planned progression into other forms of
  work
• BUT it provides some women with opportunities to
  enter labour market as low paid care workers

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In absence of access to health services, or to
support from HBC, who does the caring?

• Unpaid care work by household members,
  overwhelmingly women, and especially grannies,
  who pay out of pocket (often from state pensions)
  to do the care work better
• Transport to clinics, cleaning materials, special
  food, bed linen, medication
• They work with no informed support service, and
  with ill household member who often will not
  declare status and will not go for testing
• ARV therapy is likely to increase the numbers of
  those who go for voluntary testing

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Effective measures to challenge gender
inequality? the longer haul

• Argue with figures (for example from UNRISD care
  project)
• - Somewhat influential Time spent by women
  compared to men on unpaid care work
• (246 cf 89 minutes a day) women in households
  with no children spent more time on care of
  children than men living in households with own
  children
• - More influential Unpaid care work as fraction
  of GDP range between 11 percent and 30
  percent, depending on method used (median wage of
  all employees, or median wage of domestic
  worker)
• - Even more influential How many jobs could be
  created
• Analyse the totality of womens work, and keep
  the distinctions between the categories very
  clear
• Paid and unpaid market work
• Formal and informal paid work
• Unpaid care work