IDS has been recognised as a Care Champion at the 2024 Asia-Pacific Care Champions Special Event, which took place on 21 November as part of the Asia-Pacific Ministerial Conference on the Beijing+30 Review.
‘Care is not a burden’
Deepta Chopra, Professor of Gender and Development at IDS, feminist social scientist and expert on unpaid care and domestic work and empowerment of women and girls, attended the event to receive the award on behalf of IDS for the ‘Care is not a Burden’ academic analysis in the category ‘Knowledge Catalysts: Leading Care Research and Insights’.
In response to the award, Prof Deepta Chopra, said:
“This recognition as a ‘Care Champion’ is an important acknowledgement of the critical value of research in teasing out practical, doable policy entry points and steps towards gender and care-transformative outcomes.
“Our work is critical to re-direct attention towards the quality of care provided and received; to disentangle the ‘care crisis’ from a negative view of care as a burden or barrier; and to provide practical recommendations of how to implement the 3R approach to care (Recognise, Reduce, and Redistribute).
“This acknowledgement shows that knowledge actors such as IDS can, in partnership with like-minded policy actors, catalyse a move towards developing alternative principles and underlying ethics of care, which is essential to build caring societies.”
Working with partners
Working with policy and programme partners globally, IDS has helped to push for the international recognition of the critical role of care. This work has been further enriched by the voices of women and girls in pinpointing barriers and determining solutions to the care crisis.
The key intervention in this area has been to propose the 7-4-7 framework mapped out by Prof Deepta Chopra and her co-author Dr Meenakshi Krishnan for action, that encompasses 7 underlying principles through which we can keep care integral to all policy interventions; 4 policy categories as entry points; and 7 levers of action that can spur gender and care transformative solutions.
The role of care in fostering collective action
Moving forward, Prof Chopra would like to work on developing principles and components for a holistic care system, and given growing gender backlash and emergence of poly-crises, to reinvigorate discussions on the care economy with its messy and political underpinnings. Prof Chopra believes that this will help to envisage care as integral to building solidarities through material, spatial and labour practices and flows of support. The role of care in fostering and strengthening collective action is also central within the new IDS report ‘Building Solidarities: Gender Justice in a Time of Backlash’.
The Care Champions Special Event was organized by UNESCAP and the UN’s Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific (UN Women) with the support of the Global Alliance for Care and in collaboration with Oxfam, the World Bank, and the International Labour Organization.
