Summary of the online seminar "Sharing in Caring: Unpaid Care work, Families and the World of work"

Women face gender-specific barriers relating to norms and attitudes around their roles and abilities, including their disproportionate responsibility for unpaid care and domestic work. This limits their time availability, mobility and access to education and training – all of which can hinder their career prospects. Women in Asia and the Pacific spend more than four times as much time on unpaid care as men – and men in this region do the least amount of unpaid care of all regions. According to ILO-Gallup report, unpaid care and domestic work is the top lever for women engaging in and staying in the workforce. COVID-19 has further burdened women with additional unpaid care duties. Furthermore, only about one-quarter of 26 countries in the Asia region meet the minimal standards of maternity leave set out in ILO Convention No. 183. Casualization of the workforce further impacts women, as short-term contracts and non-standard forms of employment and increasing informality, such as home-based work, often exclude their access to maternity benefits that may exist within legislative frameworks and leave women with little or no social protection before or after giving birth. Measures to support women to manage and share work and family responsibilities – and encourage men’s involvement-– are critical to women workers’ success in the workplace. This webinar will provide attendees with the opportunity to become familiar with the key concepts and data related to unpaid care, work and family responsibilities and maternity protection as it relates to the garment sector.