Sharing Care, Building Equality

The Barbados Ministry of People Empowerment and Elder Affairs is calling attention to the importance of men sharing the care for children, the elderly and all members of the household in a more equal fashion to women.

Isiuwa Iyahen, UN Women Multi-Country Office - Caribbean Deputy Representative and Head of Office a.i., was pleased to attend the Pledge The Commitment Share The Care initiative and sign the Pledge: “Sharing Care, Building Equality”, hosted by the Honourable Adrian Forde, Minister of People Empowerment and Elder Affairs. Minister Forde shared that in Barbados, women perform 2.5 times more unpaid care work than men.

Through its partnership with the Barbados Statistical Service (BSS), UN Women provided technical support to pilot and measure unpaid care and domestic work within Barbados’ Continuous Labour Force Survey, generating the country's first nationally representative data on how women and men spend their time on unpaid care responsibilities.

This groundbreaking initiative has since been institutionalised as a permanent feature of the survey, ensuring a continuous stream of data to inform policies, programmes, and behaviour change efforts aimed at recognising, reducing, and redistributing unpaid care work and promoting more equitable sharing of caregiving responsibilities between women and men.

Access UN Women Knowledge Products on unpaid care for Barbados here:

• Making a Case for Investment in Universal Childcare in Barbados
• Assessing the Impact of Unpaid Care Work on Families in Barbados
• Piloting the Measurement of SDG Indicator 5.4.1 in Barbados

See more on the event via Barbados TV8 here: https://www.cbc.bb/news/local-news/call-for-greater-equality-in-caregiving/

This story was first published  by UN Women at https://caribbean.unwomen.org/