Care4Care

Project

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.

It’s time for a care revolution! We need to #Care4Care!

The Foundation for European Progressive Studies (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.

EU Care Atlas: Interactive Data Map

 

Browse through the EU Care Atlas, a new interactive data map to help uncover what the statistics are often hiding: how care deficits directly feed into the gender earnings gap and contribute to gender inequalities.

Care4Care Policy Brief Series

1 | Vital Yet Vulnerable: Europe’s Intra-EU Migrant Caregivers

In this policy brief, Dr Petra Ezzeddine (Charles University, Prague) questions the migration angle in the face of late modern societies’ chronic care shortage.

2 | Part-time Work: Risk or Opportunity?

In this policy brief Dr. Janna Besamusca and Dr. Mara Yerkes (Utrecht University) analyse why part-time work (PTW) is inextricably linked to care and to gender.

Other publications

• Policy Brief Vital Yet Vulnerable: Europe’s Intra-EU Migrant Caregivers. By Dr Petra Ezzeddine ©FEPS-FES. October 2021
• Policy Brief Toward a fairer, care-focused Europe. By Barbara Helfferich ©FEPS-FES. March 2021
• Policy Study Cherishing All Equally 2020: Inequality and the care economy.  By Robert Sweeney ©FEPS-TASC. October 2020
• Policy Brief Time to care! Work, life and inequality in the care economy. By Laeticia Thissen & Robert Sweeney. July 2020

Articles

• Does Europe care about care? By Barbara Helfferich (Member of #care4care expert group)10.03.2020
• Let the Coronavirus Be the Revival of a Professionalised Welfare State By Mari Huupponen (Member of #care4care expert group)
• The cross-border care labour market in Central Europe: a myth of an egalitarian and integrated Europe By Petra Ezzeddine (Member of #care4care expert group) and Zuzana Uhde. November 2020
• Gender inequality and the care economy: time for a change By Robert Sweeney (TASC). November 2020
• All we want for Christmas is a care revolution! By Laeticia Thissen, Sarah Hepp and Julia Bläsius (contribution to PES Women brochure "A feminist economy for Europe – towards a progressive economic system that works for women"). December 2020
  

 

Events

• 04/03/2021 Towards a fairer, care-focused Europe! / Watch the event. Partners: FEPS-FES-YES-S&D

• 18/01/2021 7th Barbara Prammer Symposium: For a Gender-sensitive COVID-19 Responses / Watch the event/ Partners: FEPS-Renner Institute 
  

• 30/10/2020 European Forum - Economic violence against women and girls: Covid-19 gives us attention. Presentation of the Policy Study Inequality and the care economy (1:08:39)

• 14/10/2020 Cherishing All Equally - Inequality and the Care Economy / Watch the event / Partners: FEPS-TASC-FES
  

• 02/10/2020 Welfare and Care Economy: How to strengthen gender equality and decent work in social care systems / Watch the event / Korčula School 2020. Partners: FEPS-FES-CEE Gender Network

• 29/04/2021 Progress Summit - Building a Caring Economy to Speed Recovery / Watch the event / Partners: Broadbent Institute, FEPS, the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung and the Roosevelt Institute
• 4/05/2021 Care Workers on the COVID-19 Frontline / Watch the event / Partners: the European Public Service Union, the Friedrich-Ebert Stiftung, the Foundation for European Progressive Studies, Kommunal and Arena Idé

Care Workers' Voices

 

FEPS Talks Podcast

 

Other

FEPS President Maria João Rodrigues Contribution to PES Women Campaign #MakeHerCount for Equal Pay