The Gender Care Gap: EU Migration and Post-COVID Responses

This research project "The Gender Care Gap: EU Migration and Post-COVID Responses" explores why legal frameworks which are intended to produce socially just, equitable and fair outcomes can instead entrench stereotypes and reinforce inequalities. This project looks at how legal rules can reinforce gender inequality.

It considers the impact on women of the unequal sharing of unpaid care work between men and women. In the EU, as for the rest of the world, women do more unpaid care work than men.

They are the main carers of children, people with a disability, illness, and the elderly and 38 percent of women spend one hour a day or more on caring duties compared with 25 percent of men. Women also participate in paid work and, in two parent families, both parents are likely to work.

However, research shows that women still have the main responsibility for caring for the family or for organising that care, for example by finding nurseries, dealing with emergencies or planning for elderly parents' care.

As a result, women are now often performing a "double day" or "second shift" where they must combine paid and unpaid work on a daily basis. The impact of the unequal sharing of unpaid care work on women is complicated.

What is clear is that it affects women's economic independence, which can be seen by the gender employment gap, the gender pay gap and the gender pension gap.The challenges that women face in meeting their family's unpaid care needs and combining this with their jobs has become much harder because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

For example, the various restrictions and lockdowns have led to hospitals and health care services limiting their services placing a larger burden on families to provide care for the elderly and infirm. School and nursery closures have shifted childcare and schooling needs onto the household. This has affected, among other things, women's ability to engage in paid work.

The UN has recognised the social impact that COVID-19 has had on women and the threat that these challenges have on progress towards gender equality.

Therefore, the UN is urging governments to put gender equality and women's economic independence at the heart of their post-COVID recovery planning. This project investigates the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on women.

It looks at legal frameworks, and questions whether the rules and their application progress gender equality or whether they are entrenching gender stereotypes, particularly in terms of unpaid care work.

One particular focus of this work involves addressing the gender dimension of EU migration and how the legal rules governing the free movement of people within the EU impacts women when they have caring responsibilities.

When women are living in a new country, they are removed from their family networks of support and they face increased challenges when trying to combine paid work with unpaid care responsibilities.

Furthermore, research shows that maintaining rights and protections through the EU legal rules in this area is more difficult for women when they have caring responsibilities and many women and children are experiencing isolation and hardship in their host country as a result. This project is a collaboration between academic and civil society partners.

It will be conducted with women's rights civil society organisations in Scotland and at the EU level in Brussels, to develop ways to address the gender dimension of EU migration and for women's rights more broadly to be part of the national and EU responses to the COVID-19 recovery planning.

The project's findings will be publicised widely, through academic journals and conferences and through blogs, podcasts and social media, aimed at policy makers, the general public and other researchers.

The aim of this project is to advance new ways of thinking about care, migration, gender and law and to influence approaches to post-COVID recovery to ensure that woman's rights are acknowledged, protected and promoted.