Care work Archives - Oxfam Policy & Practice

Briefing paper

Time to Care for Care Workers: Ending the domestic workers’ exploitation

29/10/2026

5 documents

51 pages long

Languages: Arabic, English, French, Spanish

Keywords

Overview

Care work sustains homes, societies and economies, yet domestic workers remain among the least protected workers in the world. This paper argues that domestic work is work like any other and is indispensable and that states must treat care as a human right and public good, not a private responsibility or market commodity. It examines […]

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Journal article

Sa’icelen as Community Strength: Indigenous women, care work and disaster justice in eastern Taiwan

21/10/2026

22 pages long

Free access through journal website

Sa’icelen as Community Strength: Indigenous women, care work and disaster justice in eastern Taiwan

Keywords

Overview

Indigenous communities globally are at the forefront of developing holistic, place-based responses to the climate crisis, yet their knowledge and leadership remain systematically marginalised in mainstream environmental governance. This article examines two Indigenous-led initiatives on Taiwan’s east coast – the Amis tribe’s post-typhoon recovery and the Atayal tribe’s revitalisation of ancestral farming practices – to […]

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Briefing paper

Personal to Powerful: Holding the line for gender justice in the face of growing anti-rights movements

06/03/2025

7 documents

48 pages long

Languages: English, French, Spanish

Keywords

Overview

Thirty years on from the commitments enshrined in the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (BPfA) this briefing reveals a picture of broken promises and unfulfilled ambition by States. This failure is not just due to a lack of political will, but also an economic system that is unequal by design. As world leaders prepare […]

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Discussion paper

Care as Essential Infrastructure: Definitions of and debates on care infrastructure from Kenya, Mexico, Peru, the Philippines, the United States, and Zimbabwe

10/06/2024

2 documents

72 pages long

Languages: English, Spanish

Keywords

Overview

Drawing on six case studies (Kenya, Mexico, Peru, the Philippines, the United States, and Zimbabwe), this paper explores the definitions, debates, and demands related to the concept of care infrastructure. The paper finds the following components of care infrastructure across the case studies: care-supporting physical infrastructure, knowledge production, community networks, national care frameworks and public […]

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Research report

US Care Policy Scorecard: Assessing federal unpaid and underpaid care policies in the US

19/07/2023

6 documents

41 pages long

Languages: English, Spanish

Keywords

Overview

The US Care Policy Scorecard seeks to assess the US care policy environment at the federal level by adapting and implementing the Care Policy Scorecard Framework and Tool in the US context. The US Scorecard looks at 30 federal policy indicators related to both unpaid care and underpaid care work (UUCW). Each policy indicator is […]

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Guidelines and toolkits

How to Talk about Care in the UK: A framing toolkit

30/05/2023

6 documents

23 pages long

Languages: English, Welsh

Keywords

Overview

Across the UK, many people providing paid and unpaid care – including parents and guardians of children, paid care workers, and unpaid carers – experience poverty, and great physical and emotional pressures. This is because the care they provide remains largely taken for granted and is not properly supported by governments and wider society. In […]

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Journal article

Platform work in the domestic and home care sector: new mechanisms of invisibility and exploitation of women migrant workers

07/12/2022

17 pages long

Free access through journal website

Platform work in the domestic and home care sector: new mechanisms of invisibility and exploitation of women migrant workers

Keywords

Overview

The platform economy is conquering the domestic work and home care sector in countries of the global North as a response to the scarcity of affordable quality care services. Based on in-depth interviews with workers, firms and stakeholders, the objective of our study is to unravel the new mechanisms of exploitation and invisibility of this […]

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Briefing note

Who cares? The gendered distribution of unpaid care work in Jordan

22/09/2022

1 documents

15 pages long

Languages: English

Keywords

Overview

Pervasive global norms position men as breadwinners and women as caregivers; in every country in the world, women do more unpaid care work than men. This paper explores the gendered distribution of unpaid care work in Jordan, where female labour market participation is among the lowest in the world. It presents the key findings of […]

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Journal article

Better stories for a gender equal and fairer social recovery from outbreaks: learnings from the RESISTIRÉ project

31/08/2022

17 pages long

Free access through journal website

Better stories for a gender equal and fairer social recovery from outbreaks: learnings from the RESISTIRÉ project

Keywords

Overview

The pandemic has radically shifted how society is organised, with increased work from home, home-schooling, and intensification of online presence, all with specific (un)intended implications on paid and unpaid care work. These implications, like those of other crises, are gendered and manifest along sex, age, disability, ethnicity/race, migration status, religion, social class, and the intersections […]

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Journal article

The Care Policy Scorecard: a new tool to shift progress towards a caring economy

31/08/2022

19 pages long

Free access through journal website

The Care Policy Scorecard: a new tool to shift progress towards a caring economy

Keywords

Overview

COVID-19 has highlighted the centrality of care and women’s labour (paid and unpaid). While there is a growing body of literature on specific policy measures to address care work in different contexts, there is no global practical tool to track progress against key policy areas. This article introduces the Care Policy Scorecard, an evidence-based policy […]

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