75% of all the unpaid care work in the world is performed by women. This limits enormously their ability to enter the labor force and have careers and incomes, to have opportunities and freedom of choice for growth and personal development or to even have recreation and leisure. “When you compare with the region, Moldova is not doing so badly, but you have many disparities between urban and rural areas. You also have wage gaps and a lot of gender segregation in the market, mainly due to women’s care work burdens. There are also widening gaps in terms of returning late to the labor force after maternity leave and being put into sectors which don’t pay very well,” Bharati Sadasivam, Team Leader, Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment at the UNDP Istanbul Regional Hub, stated in an interview for UN Magazine, which is quoted by IPN.
Bharati Sadasivam said that unless we tackle the imbalanced way in which we address care work, both society and the economy will suffer. “In Moldova the paid parental leave is three years, but in much of cases, around 90%, is taken by women. If women are lucky and they work in sectors where they are needed and their skills are not eroded, after three years they can re-enter the work force. But if you have two children and you are not working for 6 years, then it can affect your ability to get back into the labor market while at the same time being mainly responsible for raising your children and taking care of the household,” she stated.
The team leader considers this also affects whole families, because it promotes the idea that only women should take care of children and fathers have no role in it. This idea is damaging for the child as well, because it’s very important for children not to see their parents in such ‘gender roles’ and to have a connection and receive care from both parents.
In Moldova, the childcare services for this age spectrum covers only 10% of population in rural areas and only about 60% in urban areas, which is far below OECD averages. Obviously, some women will want social allocations and to stay home, but it is important to offer everybody a choice. What UNDP with the rest of the UN and civil society organizations in Moldova have been advocating with the Government is that services provided for children and the elderly need to be improved and to raise the level of service providers. Service providers should be trained to deliver skilled and quality services so that the care sector as a whole becomes a sector that both men and women find attractive as an employer. At the same time, there is a need for a lot of advocacy and education among men and women, so that they see the opportunities, benefits and costs that women experience by being out of the labor market.
Bharati Sadasivam noted that quite a lot have been done already, so it is not going to cost a lot to change the policy. “For example, the Government might want to consider whether it is possible to extend the two weeks of paid paternity leave to at least three or six months and make it fully paid to incentivize men to take it. In the long term, it will pay off, because women will be able to share the household duties with their husbands and to benefit from career opportunities. By having this arrangement, you will rise the GDP as a whole, because both men and women will have the opportunity to return to their jobs,” she stated.
