The 2021-2024 Oxfam America (OUS) Unpaid and Underpaid Care Work Strategy is intended
to guide our work over the next three years to contribute to decreasing gender inequality
through a revaluing of unpaid and underpaid care work (UUCW) in the US and
internationally, which will help to foster fair and caring economies (See “Vision Statement”
below).1
For this strategy, unpaid and underpaid care work definitions are grounded in broader concepts
of care. Care is broadly defined as “the activities and relations involved in meeting the physical
and emotional requirements of dependent adults and children, and the normative, economic,
and social frameworks within which these are assigned and carried out.”2 The definition of care
now expands to include activities people do “to maintain, continue, and repair our ‘world’ so we
can live in it as well as possible,” not only including care for people, but also care for objects and
care for our environment.3
Unpaid care work comprises the activities of tending to people and domestic tasks in
households, families, and communities to keep everyone fed, clean, safe, healthy, and thriving;
it is done without monetary compensation.4 Paid care work is performed for pay. Care workers
make up a wide range of service workers, such as nurses, teachers, doctors, social workers,
and personal care workers in public and private care sectors. Domestic workers, who provide
both direct and indirect care in households, also are part of the care workforce.
A caring economy has the wellbeing of individuals, communities, and the planet at its center;
where everyone can give and receive care; where everyone has the time and resources to care
as well as time and space away from care responsibilities; and where the UUCW currently
performed by those who are the most socially, politically, and economically marginalized, is
recognized, and valued by families, employers, policymakers, and society generally. While the
activities that occur in caring economies differ depending on context, there is a universality in
that, around the world, women on average do three times as much unpaid care work as men
globally and women make up the majority of the world’s underpaid care workers, which impacts
their long-term economic security and personal wellbeing.