By Sanyaolu Oluwatamilore Oluwabusola
There are some things we encounter so frequently that we stop questioning them. Care is one of them.
From childhood, many of us learned to associate care with the home. Someone prepares meals, cleans the house, looks after children, tends to the sick, supports elderly relatives, listens when someone is struggling, or simply makes sure that everyone is doing well. These actions are often considered part of everyday life. They may even be described as obligations that come naturally within a family.
But what happens when we stop seeing care as something that simply happens and begin asking who provides it, who benefits from it, who pays for it, and who is responsible for ensuring that it is available
These are some of the questions I found myself thinking about after attending a session of the African Feminist Macroeconomics Academy (AFMA) on “Care As A Human Right”.
The session opened with Laura Mado walking us through what AFMA is and why it exists. Since 2010, AFMA has built a learning space for African feminists, activists, and researchers to question the economic systems we have all inherited, systems that are so often treated as neutral, technical, and untouchable. AFMA's whole premise pushes back on that. Decisions around taxation, public spending, debt, trade, and social protection are not neutral. They shape lives differently depending on who you are, and they shape the lives of women in marginalized communities most of all.
What stood out to me is that AFMA doesn't see this learning as something that ends when the Academy ends. It is meant to keep moving, connecting to ongoing research, advocacy, and the broader struggle for economic justice across the continent.
The previous session had tackled the UN Tax Convention and global tax justice, essentially asking who gets to shape the economic rules the rest of us live inside of. This session took that same lens and turned it toward something closer to home: care.
What initially seemed like a discussion about caregiving became a much broader conversation about gender, economics, public policy, human rights, and social justice. The session challenged me to look at care from a perspective I had not previously fully considered: care is not merely a private matter; it is a fundamental part of how society functions.
Before the webinar, the word “care” could easily have been understood in its most familiar sense: looking after someone who needs help. However, the discussion presented a much broader understanding.
Care encompasses direct care, healthcare-related support and emotional care.
“It can be paid or unpaid, formal or informal. It includes caring for children, older persons, persons with disabilities and people who are ill. It also includes the less visible forms of emotional and domestic labour that allow individuals, families and communities to function.”
This broader definition made me realise how deeply care is embedded in everyday life.
A parent caring for a child, a daughter looking after an aging parent, a person staying home to nurse a sick family member, a healthcare worker attending to patients, or someone providing emotional support to a loved one are all participating in systems of care.
Yet these forms of labour do not receive the same recognition. Some forms of care are paid and professionally recognised. Others take place quietly within homes and are rarely considered “work” at all. This distinction matters because the absence of a salary or income does not mean the absence of value.
One of the ideas that particularly stayed with me was the invisibility of unpaid care work.
Care work can consume enormous amounts of time, energy, and resources. Yet, because it often takes place within the household, it can disappear from our understanding of economic productivity.
A person may spend several hours caring for children, preparing food, cleaning, supporting a sick relative, or performing other domestic responsibilities without receiving financial compensation. But if that work were suddenly removed, the consequences would be immediate. Children would still need to be fed and cared for. Sick people would still require attention. Homes would still need to function. Workers would still need support. Families would still need emotional and physical care.
This raises an uncomfortable question: “If society depends on this work, why is so much of it treated as though it has little or no economic value?” The answer becomes even more significant when we consider who performs much of this unpaid labour.
The webinar highlighted the disproportionate burden placed on women and girls. In many societies, caregiving continues to be associated with femininity, and women are often expected to assume responsibility for domestic and emotional labour even when they are also working or pursuing education.
This means that gender inequality does not exist only in obvious areas such as employment or political representation. It can also exist within the everyday organisation of time. A woman who spends several additional hours every day providing unpaid care has less time available for education, paid employment, rest, political participation, entrepreneurship, or personal development.
Suddenly, care is no longer simply a household issue. It becomes an issue of Economic opportunity and equality.
Another aspect of the webinar that changed my perspective was the connection between care and macroeconomics.
Macroeconomics can sometimes feel distant from everyday life. Discussions about taxation, public expenditure, fiscal policy, development financing and government budgets may appear to belong to government offices, financial institutions or academic classrooms.
But the webinar demonstrated that these decisions eventually reach people's homes.
Consider a government deciding how much to spend on healthcare. That decision can affect whether families have access to hospitals, medicines, and trained healthcare workers.
Consider childcare services. Their availability and affordability can influence whether parents, particularly women, can participate fully in paid employment.
Consider social protection. Its strength or weakness can determine whether families facing illness, disability, unemployment, or old age are able to cope without placing the entire burden on relatives.
This helped me understand why AFMA places emphasis on examining economic systems and policies through a feminist perspective.
Policies are not automatically gender-neutral simply because they apply to everyone. A policy may appear equal on paper while producing very different outcomes for people who occupy different positions in society.
If women are already carrying a disproportionate share of unpaid care, for example, a reduction in public services may not affect men and women in the same way. Someone has to fill the gap created when public support disappears. Often, that responsibility falls back on households—and within households, disproportionately on women. Therefore, decisions made at the level of national budgets and economic policy can reinforce or reduce inequalities that appear to exist within the private sphere.
Perhaps the most significant question raised by the session for me was whether care should remain primarily a private responsibility?
There is certainly nothing wrong with families caring for one another. Family care can be deeply meaningful and is an important part of community life. The problem arises when society assumes that families should be able to provide whatever care is required regardless of their circumstances.
Not every family has the same resources.
A wealthy household may be able to employ a caregiver, pay for childcare or access private healthcare. Another household may have no such options. A family facing poverty, unemployment or inadequate public services may have to depend almost entirely on unpaid labour.
When care is treated purely as a private responsibility, these differences can become even more pronounced. Recognising care as a public responsibility does not mean removing care from families. Rather, it means acknowledging that families should not be left to carry the entire burden alone. Governments and institutions have a role to play in creating systems that make care accessible and sustainable. That can include healthcare services, childcare facilities, support for persons with disabilities, social protection, care infrastructure, and policies that protect care workers.
The discussion of the International Labour Organization's Five Rs framework provided a practical way of thinking about how care inequalities can be addressed.
The first is Recognition. We cannot address a problem that we refuse to see. Unpaid care work needs to be acknowledged as meaningful labour rather than dismissed as something that simply happens within families.
The second is Reduction. The burden of unnecessary or excessive unpaid care can be reduced through public services, infrastructure and technology. For example, access to reliable healthcare, water, sanitation, childcare and other public services can significantly reduce the amount of time individuals have to spend meeting basic needs without support.
The third is Redistribution. Care responsibilities need to be distributed more fairly, not only between women and men, but among families, communities, governments and other institutions.
The fourth is Reward. People who perform paid care work deserve fair compensation, decent working conditions and appropriate recognition.
The fifth is Representation. The people who perform care work and those who depend on care should have a voice in decisions concerning care policies and systems.
What I found particularly valuable about this framework is that it demonstrates that solving the care crisis requires more than telling people to "value caregivers." Value must be reflected in resources, policies, working conditions and decision-making.
The webinar also situated care within a human rights framework, referencing instruments such as the African Charter, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and CEDAW.
This was important because describing care as a human right changes the conversation. If care is merely a social expectation, governments and institutions may treat it as desirable but optional. If care is understood as a human rights issue, questions of accessibility, equality, dignity, and accountability become much more significant. The recognition of care as a standalone right by the UN Human Rights Council represents an important development in this conversation. But the existence of legal recognition does not automatically guarantee that people experience that right in practice.
This distinction between Recognition and implementation stood out to me.
A right can exist within a legal or policy document while remaining inaccessible to the people who need it most. A healthcare facility may technically exist, but if it is inaccessible or unaffordable, the right to healthcare means something very different in practice. A care policy may exist, but if there is inadequate funding, insufficient personnel, or unequal access, the people who need care may continue to depend on unpaid family labour.
This is why economic decisions matter so much.
Rights require resources.
The webinar also made me think about a question that is often overlooked: Who cares for the caregiver?
We frequently celebrate mothers, daughters, nurses, teachers, domestic workers, and other caregivers for their dedication. We describe them as selfless and resilient. But sometimes praise can conceal a problem.
Telling people that they are strong does not necessarily make their responsibilities easier. A person may be extremely dedicated to caring for others and still need financial support, rest, healthcare, decent working conditions, and assistance. This is especially important for women who are expected to combine paid employment with extensive unpaid care responsibilities.
There is a danger in romanticising sacrifice.
Care should not have to depend on one person's willingness to continuously sacrifice their own time, health, opportunities, or ambitions for others. A fair care system should make it possible for people to care for others without being forced into disadvantage because they provide that care.
As an African, I also found the conversation particularly relevant because care systems cannot be separated from the realities of our communities.
Across many African societies, extended family networks and community relationships play important roles in providing care. These systems can offer valuable support, particularly where formal social protection is limited. However, relying heavily on family and community structures can also place significant pressure on individuals.
When public systems are inadequate, families often become the first and last line of support. This can be especially difficult for households dealing with poverty, unemployment, illness, disability, or other challenges. Therefore, recognising care as a human right should not mean replacing African community structures with government institutions. Instead, it should mean building systems where families and communities are supported rather than overwhelmed. The goal should be a society where caring for one another remains a strength, but where the responsibility does not become an unequal burden carried by the same people repeatedly.
One of the things I appreciated about the webinar was that it did not present policy as the only solution. Laws and government programmes matter, but social attitudes matter too.
If a society continues to believe that cooking, cleaning, childcare and emotional support are naturally women's responsibilities, government investment alone will not eliminate gender inequality in care.
Behavioral change is necessary.
Men and boys must be encouraged to participate meaningfully in caregiving. Families need to question traditional assumptions about who should perform certain tasks. Communities need to recognise care work as valuable rather than automatically associating it with women.
At the same time, behavioural change should not become an excuse for governments to avoid their responsibilities. Individuals can change their behaviour while institutions must still provide the systems and resources necessary for people to exercise their rights.
Both levels matter.
Perhaps the most valuable part of the session was not any single fact I learned, but the way it changed the question I was asking.
Before the webinar, I might have asked: “Who is responsible for taking care of people?”
After the webinar, I am more inclined to ask: “What systems make it possible for people to give and receive care with dignity?”
That is a much bigger question. It forces us to look beyond individual families and examine the structures around them. It asks us to consider government budgets, public services, labour conditions, gender expectations, and human rights. It also challenges the idea that economic justice can be discussed without discussing care.
How can we talk about women's economic participation without talking about who cares for children while women work? How can we talk about development without considering healthcare and social protection? How can we talk about equality while one group continues to perform a disproportionate amount of unpaid labour? How can we build productive economies without acknowledging the people and systems that sustain human beings in the first place?
These questions demonstrate that care is not peripheral to economic life.
Care is part of economic life.
Ultimately, the webinar left me with a simple but powerful understanding: care sustains society, and anything that sustains society deserves to be taken seriously.
Care should not be invisible simply because it happens in homes. It should not be undervalued simply because some of it is unpaid. It should not be treated as women's natural responsibility simply because historical and cultural expectations have assigned it to them. And it should not be left entirely to families when the challenges involved require broader social support.
Recognising care as a human right requires a shift in how we think about responsibility. It requires governments to invest in care systems, employers to recognise the realities faced by caregivers, communities to challenge gendered expectations, and individuals to share responsibilities more equitably. Most importantly, it requires us to recognise the dignity of both sides of care: the person who needs care and the person who provides it.
The webinar reminded me that economies are ultimately about people. Behind every statistic, budget, policy and economic decision are individuals whose lives are shaped by whether they have access to healthcare, support, time and the ability to care for themselves and others.
Perhaps that is why the conversation about care deserves to move from the margins to the centre of conversations about development and justice.
Because care is not a favour.
It is not an afterthought.
It is not simply "women's work."
Care is a fundamental part of human life, and recognising it as a human right is a step towards building systems in which no one has to choose between caring for others and having the opportunity to live, work and thrive with dignity.
Listening to this session, I realised that Shades of Us is, in many ways, a caregiver too. Just as the women in this conversation are expected to hold families and communities together quietly, unpaid, and on the assumption that love alone should sustain the work, organisations like ours are often expected to hold communities together on passion alone, screening films, running mental health outreaches, and supporting survivors, while treated as though our work should simply happen out of goodwill rather than be resourced as the essential labour it is. The session's insistence that care requires real investment, not just recognition, is the same argument we find ourselves making every time we seek funding to keep our programs alive. If care work deserves to be seen as infrastructure rather than instinct, then so does the work of the organisations quietly holding that infrastructure together.
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