Video report

How to achieve fairness in care work

Care work is unfairly distributed and underpaid on a global scale... yet no economy can function without it. We show how care work can be more firmly anchored in our understanding of the economy in order to sustainably improve working conditions for care providers.

Text
Felix Jung
Pictures
Paddy Hamelmann / Studio ZX
Date
May 28, 2024
Reading time
2 minutes

89 billion hours - the amount of unpaid care work performed in Germany every year. It is also unfairly distributed: Women do more than three quarters of this work. Unpaid care work forms the invisible basis of today's economy. A culture of appreciation is just as lacking as fair pay. Economic performance can only be achieved if children, the elderly, people with disabilities, and those suffering from (chronic) illness receive proper care - one cannot function without the other. Nevertheless, most people see care work as an activity detached from the economy and which is seemingly endlessly available. This is one of the reasons why working conditions in care work are often precarious and lead to poverty in old age.

Business and care go hand in hand

The "Economy is Care" project does not want to accept this injustice. In our video report, we accompany two care workers in their everyday lives, draw attention to the unequal treatment in their field of work, and ask how the fundamental conditions in the care sector can be improved. Feline Tecklenburg, the managing co-chairwoman of the project "Economy is Care", also explains what needs to be done at a political level to ensure more justice in care work.

many people at a demonstration, a woman in the foreground holds up a cardboard sign
The dossier of the topic

Justice

To the dossier overview

We are faced with urgent problems relating to the concept of justice: the wealth divide, global inequality, access to education, and climate justice. These require a fair distribution of resources, intergenerational justice, equal opportunities, and a fair distribution of environmental burdens. Justice shapes us and influences our decisions. Read here how we promote projects to achieve societal justice.

To the dossier overview
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