News and Events

Webinar - Unpaid Care Work and Covid-19: A Missed Opportunity to Recognise, Value and Take Action?

Friday 5 March, 2pm (UK time)

Hosted in collaboration with IGDC York

Register and learn more here.

Globally, 75% of unpaid care work is carried out by women and girls and this gendered burden of labour intersects with inequalities of race, class and caste. What is commonly referred to as the economy - consisting only of production and measured only by GDP - would not function without this work, of maintaining and reproducing the population, which is undertaken every day within homes and communities. Unpaid care work accounts for a huge part of global economic activity: in 2016, for example, unpaid household service work in the UK was valued at £1.24 trillion, nearly two-thirds of the country's GDP. Yet, care work remains largely unvalued, unrecognised and unsupported in society. The Covid-19 pandemic has foregrounded its fundamental importance for society and the economy; at the same time, pandemic policy responses have exposed and exacerbated the persistence of gender inequality in care work and revealed the inadequacy of existing support structures. How are feminist and women’s movements challenging this continuing non-recognition?

Speakers

• Dr Diya Dutta is currently a Research Manager and Theme Lead, India and the World at Oxfam India. She holds a PhD in Sociology from Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) and attained her MPhil degree in Development Studies at Oxford University specializing in gender, South Asia's political economy, and ageing. She has worked in programme, research and policy advocacy roles with various national and international organizations including the United Nations. She has domain expertise in gender, decentralized governance, social transformations, ageing, demography, women's political empowerment, violence against women, demographic trends, chronic poverty, urbanization, trade & investment, regional cooperation and South Asia.
• Dr Juliana Martinez Franzoni is an Associate Professor at the University of Costa Rica (Institute of Social Research, School of Political Science, and Center of Political Research and Studies). Juliana researches comparative welfare systems in Latin America. Her research focuses on welfare regimes, social policy and inequality in Latin America. Juliana also serves as co-editor of the ZED/CROP Global Poverty Series and Social Policy´s international advisory board member. She recently published a book on universal social policy, actors, ideas and architectures, in the global South (with Diego Sánchez-Ancochea). Her new project looks at the State and paternity across Latin America.
• Dr Rosemary Morgan is an Assistant Scientist at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, in the Department of International Health, with a joint position in the School of Nursing. She is the Associate Chair in Inclusion, Diversity, Anti-Racism, and Equity (IDARE) for the International Health Department. Rosemary has expertise in gender, gender analysis, and intersectionality. She currently leads the Sex and Gender Analysis Core for the NIH funded Sex and Age Differences in Immunity to Influenza (SADII) Center. She is the co-primary investigator on a project exploring the gendered effects of COVID-19 in Bangladesh, Kenya, Nigeria, DRC, and Brazil supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, as well as an advisor on a CIHR funded project exploring the gendered effects of COVID-19 in Canada, the UK, China, and Hong Kong and co-coordinates an international Gender and COVID-19 Working Group. Also, she works as a Gender Equality and Social Inclusion (GESI) advisor for the UK Partnerships for Health Systems programme (UKPHS).
• Dr Ruth Pearson is an Emeritus Professor of Development Studies at the University of Leeds and an international development consultant. Professor Pearson has been with the University of Leeds since 2000 after establishing the Gender Analysis and Development programmes at UEA where she was MA Director in Development Studies 10 Years and holding the Chair in Women and Development at the Institute for Social Sciences in The Hague. Her research has been focused on analysing globalization from a gender perspective, examining changes in the employment of women workers internationally, reflecting the increased complexities of global production systems, and the ways in which work on migration, care and reproduction have enhanced the understanding of the gendered nature of globalisation. Recently her research has expanded geographically from a focus on Latin America to include the Thai-Burmese border and the South Asian diaspora in the UK. Ruth is also involved with a number of international (UN), bilateral and national development agencies and NGOs.

Chairs

• Tallulah Lines, Research Associate, IGDC, University of York
• Jayanthi Lingham, Postgraduate Research Fellow, WICID, University of Warwick

Dr Jayanthi Lingham (WICID Warwick) and Dr. Mel Johnston (GPS Monash), members of the Inclusive Economies and Enduring Peace team have launched an excellent new resource, "The Transformative Role of Social Reproduction: An Annotated Bibliography," a publication of the WICID Methods Lab and the Monash Gender Peace and Security Centre.

This bibliography forms a theoretical grounding for their time use surveys of conflict affected areas in Burma & Sri Lanka in early 2020. Sections include:

1. Social Reproduction

2. The Household

3. Depletion

4. Conflict & Violence

5. The Regenerative State

6. Methodology

You can access the bibliography here: https://bridges.monash.edu/articles/educational_resource/_/13728475

28 Jan @ 2:00pm UK time *limited space*

In collaboration with Warwick's Research and Impact Services, WICID is hosting a workshop on developing the Gender Equality Statement for GCRF applications. The workshop will explore the Gender Toolkit and other strategies to help those applying to GCRF grants. To register please email wicid@warwick.ac.uk by January 22. Please note that this workshop is capped at 30 attendees.

Join us for the first Critical South Asia Group webinar of 2021, Thursday January 21 from 2-3pm UK time.

Find out more and register here: https://tinyurl.com/csagjan21

Season's greetings and Happy New Year from WICID!

Thank you to the entire WICID community for helping us get through a challenging year through your contributions and support to our programme of work - research, conversations, and exchange of ideas through our events and publications. WICID has had a busy year - we have enjoyed hosting speakers from around the world through our webinar series, we have published focused and urgent comment in our blog, Think Development, we have developed our innovate research video series, Think Development Out Loud, we have launched a toolkit from our Methods Lab, and and we have hosted our first Partners' Meeting, which generated concrete ideas for research projects. Our team continues to work on research projects across our 4 themes: of gender, health, mobilities, and peace, security and justice, while sustaining our commitment to ethical and inclusive partnerships and dialogue.
We wish you a healthy and joyful new year and look forward to collaborating in 2021.

Shirin, Briony, Lola, and Maeve (The WICID Executive Management Team)