• What is the current and estimated future size of the consumption of unpaid work in Portugal? Who is ensuring it and who will be able to ensure in the next decades?
• What is the monetary value of women’s and men’s unpaid care work?
• What is the impact of unpaid care work in national economy, particularly in the GDP?

These are utmost important and long overdue questions that project‘The value of unpaid work of women and men – care and domestic work’ aims at responding.

Project ‘The value of unpaid work of women and men – care and domestic work’ is being developed by a research team at CESIS – Centro de Estudos para a Intervenção Social, composed by Heloísa Perista e Pedro Perista, in partnership with CITE – Comissão para a Igualdade no Trabalho e no Emprego (Portugal) and the Institutt for samfunnsforskning (Norway). Additionally, Maria do Céu da Cunha Rêgo and María Ángeles Durán assist the project through their specialised inputs.

The project receives funding from the EEA and Norway Financial Mechanisms 2014-2021, through Programme Work-life Balance and Gender Equality. The timeframe for the project is 26 months ending in October 2022.

One of its objectives is to elaborate carefully considered evidence-based public policy recommendations, as well as proposals for concrete intervention, basing on a gender-sensitivetransformative approach advocating the recognition of care within the scope of human rights.

Project ‘The value of unpaid work of women and men – care and domestic work’ is being developed by a research team at CESIS – Centro de Estudos para a Intervenção Social, composed by Heloísa Perista e Pedro Perista,in partnership with CITE – Comissão para a Igualdade no Trabalho e no Emprego (Portugal) and the Institutt for samfunnsforskning (Norway). Additionally, Maria do Céu da Cunha Rêgo and María Ángeles Durán assist the project through their specialised inputs.

The timeframe for the project is 26 months ending in October 2022.

The project receives funding from the EEA and Norway Financial Mechanisms 2014-2021, through Programme Work-life Balance and Gender Equality’s Small Grant Scheme #1 – Studies analysing the economic impact of inequalities between women and men, Priority Area: C) Study on the value of unpaid work (domestic work and care work).

The project comprises four activities:

ACTIVITY 1

Activity 1 aims at answering the following research question: what is the size of the consumption of unpaid care work?

The Scale Durán, developed by María Ángeles Durán, consultant of the project, allows for the estimation of the size of the consumption of unpaid care work. Basingon this Scale, the distribution of the consumption of unpaid care work by age groups will be estimated, specifying the annual volume of hours of unpaid care work consumed by each age group. Both total figures and specific figures for unpaid care work to children and to dependent adult people will be provided. Additionally, prospective scenarios till 2050 will be produced in order to estimate the amount of care that society is expected to demand in the short and medium run from different stakeholders: women and men in families, volunteers, the State / public services and the market. These scenarios will also allow assessing the sustainability of welfare and will be discussed and validated in focus groups with researchers, political decision-makers andrepresentatives from government agencies and civil society organisations.

ACTIVITY 2

Activity 2 aims at answering the following research question: what is the monetary value of women’s and men’s unpaid work – care work and domestic work?

The estimation of the monetary value of women’s and men’s unpaid care workand domestic work will be made upon two complementary methodological approaches for the choosing of the converter or shadow-price: opportunity cost and market replacement. This estimation exercise will also aim to associate to the recognition and valuation of unpaid work, typically interpreted as measurement, a dimension of justice and well-being of women and men, by the adoption of the Triple R Framework – Recognise, Reduce, Redistribute unpaid domestic and care work, based on an proposal by the UN and also resumed by the ILO and OECD.

ACTIVITY 3

Activity 3 aims at answering the following research question: what is the impact of women’s and men’s unpaid work - domestic work and care work – on the national economy, and on the GDP in particular?

Departing from activity 2 it will be estimated the contribution of women’s and men’s unpaid domestic work and care work, not only for the national economy, and for the GDP in particular, but also for the individual and family well-being of women and men and to societal well-being. This exercise will feed into a proposal for a satellite account regarding unpaid domestic and care work, in the System of National Accounts thus fostering innovation and the overcoming of limitations identified regarding the GDP as indicator for economic performance and social progress.

ACTIVITY 4

Activity 4 aims at elaborating public policy recommendations.

The research team will elaborate public policy recommendations, as well as proposals that are concrete, relevant and feasible in the short-term, aimed to Recognise, Reduce, Redistribute unpaid domestic and care work, adopting a gender-responsive approach that recognises care as a human right.

Recommendations will be discussed in a consultation session with the presence of persons and organisations particularly accredited and departing from a concrete proposal led by the consultant of the project Maria do Céu da Cunha Rêgo.

The (on-line) participation of foreign persons and bodies, namely the Norwegian partner, represented by Ragni Hege Kitterød, and the consultant of the project MaríaÁngelesDurán (Spain) will allow framing and benchmarking these recommendations and proposals in the light of the best practices tested in other national contexts.