WUNRN
European Women's Lobby - EWL
CALL TO EU FOR EQUAL SHARING VS.
PRIVATISATION OF CARE, PERSONAL & HOUSEHOLD SERVICES
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The EWL last week sent its Contribution responding the EC Public Consultation on
the staff working document “Exploiting the employment potential of the personal
and household services”. The EWL contribution called for framing a real
gender equality perspective when addressing personal and household services, a
sector where female migrant workers are highly represented, and stressed the
need to recognise that care policies are pillars for the equal economic
independence of women and are intrinsically related to the achievement of
equality between women and men.
The EWL also called for the
recognition of care policies and the provision of care services as pillars to
the equal economic independence of women and as intrinsically related to the
achievement of equality between women and men. Women experience inequalities in
all areas of life, including in employment as a direct result of insufficient
collective care responsibility and infrastructures and of inequalities between
women and men in the sharing of unpaid household and domestic tasks due to
entrenched gender stereotypes, expectations and roles.
The EWL is particularly concerned
by the externalisation of care services to individuals, often overqualified
migrant women who are being channelled into a sector, which is one of the few
possibilities for migrants to work and where their rights as workers are very
often not guaranteed or respected.
Delegating tasks that are
associated with gender roles through privatisation instead of promoting a
collective responsibility and equal sharing of care between women and men has
repercussions for society as a whole as inequalities between women and men and
among women become more entrenched and institutionalised.
To draft its contribution, the
EWL received inputs from several of its national members and from different
academic experts and NGO with high level of expertise regarding women workers
in the sector.