Care work forms the often invisible infrastructure of all life. It is largely carried out by women and other marginalised groups, and it holds up communities and societies. It can be work in relation to production, such as in farms or forests, as well as the work of reproduction and care in the home and community spaces.
Yet it is seldom recognised as "work" in policies or environmental and climate practice. It goes unacknowledged in formal statistics. For example, since in almost all countries men are predominantly listed as the landowners, the work done by others on farms, including women, remains invisible in official statistics. As a result the conditions of people carrying out this work are ignored.
Most environmental and climate projects take it for granted that the work of care will get done. Climate projects such as REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation) in the global south, for example, have tried to involve women in markets for non-timber forest products. This is dubbed as a win for the climate and for women's empowerment. But these efforts disregarded the added burden it put on women already working in the home and in production.
What's more, these projects ignore the constraints women face in markets over which they have little say.
In our research we found that REDD+ appeared to be perpetuating the gendered division of labour. Formal environmental decision-making about the resources and the work in the environemnt moved upwards but the responsibility and the burden of actual environmental labour shifted further down in gendered ways. All this was enabled by policies whose stated aims were to tackle gender inequality through the medium of REDD+. The assumption was that including women into global markets would automatically lead to erasure of inequalities. The result was quite the opposite.
There's another layer to the invisibility of care work which has become all the more acute in times of climate transitions. Care work goes beyond care for people and goes beyond the home. It also includes care for living environments, as my research with women's groups in villages in Sweden and India showed me. The women's groups worked to organise get-togethers and maintain community and rural spaces (with the help of men as well).
I show that such work, often in "in-between spaces" (between crops and homesteads, such as on the edges of fields, or in organising events and taking care of community spaces) and "in-between times" (around other chores in the household and fields), demonstrates the close links of care in the private and public spheres.
This work, highlighted already by several early feminists working on the environment, remains unseen in official accounts and programmes, even today.
Women, both in an individual capacity and in collectives through their environmental work, erase the boundaries of the public (community spaces, formal workplaces) and private (home).
This blurring of boundaries results in the work being ignored in official accounts. It could lead to economic activity being undercounted.
What is needed is systematic attention to the work of care, maintenance and repair being carried out in the everyday, work that is often determined by gender, ethnicity and class.
Some bright spots
In a recent overview of the literature on care and climate change, we found that there is a narrow understanding of care work as drudgery. It is either absent or mentioned as one aspect of women's plight rather than as indispensable for environmental governance.
We found in the literature that projects with care-sensitive approaches may be more likely to be accepted by local people if the whole community is involved rather than regarding care work largely as an aspect (and cause) of women's vulnerability.
Sharing and collectivising care work at the same time as delivering on environmental goals has shown positive outcomes.
Among the best examples is the Fundaeco project in Guatemala. It combines forest conservation with the establishment of community maternal and sexual healthcare services (serving 50,000 people) run by midwives.
Others are more modest. For example, they provide childcare to enable women's participation, such as that mentioned in the Sisam solar irrigation project in west Africa.
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Another example is the Solar Mamas Program initiated in India by the Barefoot College of Tilonia, Rajasthan. The programme now operates in more than 90 countries and is the result of partnerships between state agencies, non-governmental organisations and private companies.
The programme trains women as solar engineers. Many are unable to leave their villages due to care responsibilities. The training is done through a long and inclusive process where a large part of the community is involved. Their care is acknowledged and the care of energy infrastructure is embedded in collective care work rather than individual solar engineers.
Such attempts bring women's and other marginalised groups' lived experiences into the work of environmental and climate governance and acknowledge the care work that underpins both productive and reproductive labour. They may be a way to start bridging the gap between new climate programmes and care work.
Seema Arora-Jonsson, Professor, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
