28 June 2018•Update: 29 June 2018
By Sadik Kedir Abdu
ANKARA
A looming global care crisis is set to affect 2.3 billion people by 2030, the International Labor Organization warned in a new report on Wednesday.
The UN agency said in a statement: "Sweeping changes in policies should address the rising need for care and tackle the huge disparity between women’s and men’s care responsibilities.”
The statement also underlined the difficulty for those mothers who raise children under six-years-old with less than half of them having the ability to secure a paid job.
“The global prominence of nuclear families and single-headed households, and the growth of women’s employment in certain countries increase the demand for care workers,” said Laura Addati, lead author of the report in the statement.
“If not addressed properly, current deficits in care work and its quality will create a severe and unsustainable global care crisis, and further increase gender inequalities in the world of work,” she added.
According to data collected from 64 countries, two billion people are giving unpaid care services, the statement said.
There are over two billion people, including 1.9 billion children under 15-years-old and 200 million elders that need care, it said.
Stressing the unfair distribution of care works between the genders, the report said it is associated to the “very much engrained” belief in many cultures that men are their family's sole breadwinner and that women are the principal carers.
In 2018, 606 million working-age women said they were not able to go for a paid job because of unpaid care work while 41 million men said they were not in the labor force for the same reason, the report said.
