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Directive 2019/1158 on work-life balance for parents and carers came into force on August 1, 2019. It regulates EU-wide minimum standards for various types of leave of absence and flexible working hours for care work This is intended to support a more gender-equal division of unpaid care work.
The Dossier introduces the concept of care work and shows how its division impacts socio-economic gender equality. The Dossier also provides an overview of the content and objectives of the Directive with a focus on its gender equality policy dimension. A first introduction is given in the foreword by Irena Moozova, Deputy Director General - International Dimension of Justice Policy, Rule of Law and Gender Equality in the Directorate General Justice at the European Commission. It also includes contributions by Attila Bőhm (COFACE Families Europe) with a civil society perspective on the Directive and by Caroline de la Porte (Copenhagen Business School) on conditions for a higher take-up of leave by fathers.
With multiple crises impacting the global economy, more and more people are being pushed or pushed harder into poverty. According to the UN (2022), 1 COVID-19 caused the first increase in poverty rates in decades. Lockdowns introduced at different phases of the pandemic led to job losses and consequent losses of income, accommodation, and financial independence. It has been shown that groups at various intersections of inequality and particularly gender, class, age, and nationality were made even more vulnerable and pushed into deep poverty during the crisis.
Civil society organisations (CSOs), feminist organisations, and other initiatives played a key role in reaching out to the margins and supporting vulnerable groups who fell through the cracks of social protection schemes. Their creative strategies for fighting poverty along intersecting inequalities should be harnessed in the future to ensure a feminist and human rights approach.
The RESISTIRÉ project examines inequalities using a gender+ approach, which includes the application of a gender perspective in the quantitative and qualitative analyses of other socioeconomic differences. The European datasets that were used over the course of three research cycles of the project provided an opportunity to explore relevant indicators and the unequal experience of different groups during the pandemic. While our data analysis was able to identify and highlight some existing and worsening inequalities, it was often challenging to undertake an intersectional, gender+ approach because of a lack of more accurately representative European-level data.
As a way of harvesting our collective insights from the RESISTIRÉ research, we 1) propose the concept of ‘crisis as a continuum’ as an essential framework for crisis prevention, response, recovery, and monitoring, and 2) suggest that public authorities at all levels, including the European Union, support and learn from an inclusive feminist crisis response to prevent and better manage future crises. These recommendations are based on the three cycles of RESISTIRÉ research and supported by project factsheets that aim to provide a conceptual framework for approaching future crises.
