Care labor, intergenerational equity, and (social) sustainability

Abstract

Of the three sustainability (social, environmental and economic) pillars, the social one is the least developed. The 2020/2021 COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted why assuring social sustainability requires examining the central role care labor plays in intergenerational sustainability, with attention to the potentially conflicting rights of caregivers and care receivers, as well as to gender, geographic, age, class and other inequalities. A system that focuses on recognition, reduction, redistribution, reinforcement and reward (5 Rs) is needed to further gender equality and assure that care labor receives adequate policy support. Recognition or naming the problem, efforts to reduce drudgery, redistribution of care within the family and beyond, as well as two forms of support to care givers – reinforcement and reward make up the 5 Rs. Focusing on 5Rs can also help prioritize when social, environmental and economic goals conflict.

KEYWORDS:

• Social sustainability
• care labor
• gender
• United Nations
• intergenerational equity

Introduction

Since the Brundtland report (United Nations, 1987), sustainability has been identified as key to human well-being and as comprising three legs – an environmental, an economic and a social one. The concept of social sustainability though has received far less focus than the other two. In this paper, I argue that for policy makers to take social sustainability seriously they need to define the term social sustainability much more clearly and that the concept must take into account not only the key role social sustainability plays in assuring intergenerational well-being, but also be informed by a focus on social reproduction and gender equality.

In order to better link the concepts of social sustainability, intergenerational well-being, social reproduction and care labor, I briefly explore the degree to which discussions of gender equality and social sustainability have been in conversation with each other, with a focus on both the academic and UN discourse. I also argue for a reframing of the concept of social sustainability so that social reproduction, gender equality, care labor and intergenerational justice are at the center of the discussion. Building off earlier feminist work focusing on the gendering of care labor, I concretely suggest the need for a focus on five Rs in relation to the concept of care labor, to assure that gender equality and social sustainability are addressed simultaneously. The five Rs include recognition, reduction and redistribution (which have previously been identified as important), but also reinforcement and reward. Intergenerational equity in particular is not achievable without some focus on the latter two. Additionally, an emphasis on the interlinkages between social sustainability, gender equality and intergenerational well-being brings home arguments made by numerous previous scholars, who have emphasized the shortcoming of emphasizing market solutions as adequate for addressing social needs.

The explicit identification of five Rs not only can provide a policy framework, but also help explore how the differing pillars (economic, environmental and social) are sometimes complementary, but at other times a challenge to address simultaneously. These contradictions are important to identify because as countries advance in terms of their embrace of sustainability targets, conflicts are going to emerge between the different aspects and more thought needs to be given to whether and how societies can advance on all three of these goals simultaneously.

As this paper was being finalized, the 2020/2021 COVID-19 pandemic was devastating communities across the globe. Three issues this pandemic has brought out are the importance of care labor to human thriving, the huge burden that unpaid care labor places particularly on those with dependents, and the stark differences in social expectations in terms of women’s and men’s responsibility for providing care labor. The pandemic has therefore brought home even more emphatically the centrality of care labor to social sustainability, historic neglect of this aspect of sustainability in the policy arena and the implications for gender (in)equality.

I propose the following steps to assuring that policy makers take social sustainability seriously:

1. explicitly linking social reproduction, care labor, gender equality and social sustainability;

2. recognizing the limits of market-based solutions to addressing the challenge of sustainability;

3. acknowledging that balancing the rights of individual care recipients and care givers, as well as societal needs is difficult;

4. proposing that recognition, reduction, redistribution, reinforcement and reward (5 Rs) are essential to addressing women’s particularly heavy unpaid work burden;

5. acknowledging the interconnectedness between the three sustainability pillars, and the need for integrated approaches whereby trade-offs and synergistic links are better addressed.

Before expanding on each of these points, a brief review of the existing literatures on social sustainability, as well as feminist approaches to care labor, are in order.

Defining (social) sustainability

An examination of multiple bodies of literature is useful in exploring the intersection between the concepts of social sustainability, social reproduction and care labor – the discourse within the UN, scholars who apply a feminist lens to studies of the environment, researchers who engage with the concept of social sustainability and finally those that have contributed to our understanding of the concepts of social reproduction and care labor (the latter will be discussed in the next section).

In the UN context, the three terms social, economic and environmental are frequently mentioned together, but there are very few substantive discussions of social sustainability. Instead, social sustainability is generally lumped in with the other two terms, and then not pursued further. Discussion in a UN background paper written by Drexhage and Murphy (2010, p. 10) is telling; they juxtapose the ‘dominant view of governments and businesses … that sustainable development is continued economic growth made more environmentally sensitive,’ with the view that sustainability is ‘a balancing act between the economy and the environment,’ and finally a view held by some ‘NGOs and academics [who] have argued that sustainable development does not go far enough to create the required lifestyle, consumption, and behavioural changes.’

Even a short article by UNEP (2015, paragraph 3) titled: ‘The Three Dimensions of Sustainable Development: Is an Integrated Approach beyond our Reach?’ contained no definition of social sustainability. Similarly, the UNRISD (n.d.) has a web page titled ‘Social Dimensions of Social Sustainability’ that hints at the ways UNRISD is thinking about social sustainability, since it includes mentions of youth, gender, civil society, but a definition of the term remains elusive.

The closest thing to a definition I found was in a report by the UN’s Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA) (2008, p. 186). It consisted of the following quote, which the report attributes to a working paper by Harris (2000, cited in UN's Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA), 2008):

Social – A socially sustainable system must achieve distributional equity, adequate provision of social services including health and education, gender equity, and political accountability and participation.

This definition focuses on the aims of social sustainability, but not on the means for achieving various goals.

In contrast to the UN, the World Bank at one time devoted an entire portion of their web page to this issue, including the following definition:

Social sustainability means responding better to local communities; ensuring responses are tailored to local country contexts; and promoting social inclusion, cohesion, and accountability (World Bank, 2013).¹

Between June 2016 and January 2017 the discussion of sustainability on the World Bank web page changed considerably and pages I had located in 2016 were removed by early 2017. In September 2020, the World Bank added the following definition to their web page: ‘Social sustainability is about inclusive and resilient societies where citizens have voice and governments respond.’

In terms of emphasis, both the previous and the current World Bank definition focus primarily on governance mechanisms for assuring that various voices are being heard, rather than on defining at a more basic level what inputs are required to assure social sustainability. It is noteworthy that both the UN and the World Bank definitions affirm that social sustainability is a desirable goal in and of itself and therefore somewhat independent of environmental sustainability. This is not to dismiss the idea that the two are also closely intertwined, a point made quite eloquently by Katz (2001). Still, the key question of how to define and even more importantly to achieve social sustainability remains largely unanswered.

UNRISD and UN Women are two UN organizations that, although they have not defined the term either, do engage more directly with the social aspects of sustainability. UNRISD (2015, p. 16) for example discusses the ‘social dimensions of social sustainability’ with a particular focus on the ‘intersectionality of social and environmental issues’ and the central importance of ‘international governance.’ Mention is also made of the need to identify ‘innovative eco-social programs that combine environmental and social objectives.’

A UN Women document 2014 (32) that explicitly links social sustainability and care labor states: ‘How societies organize this [unpaid care] work is central to their social sustainability.’ A background paper for the 2014 report, by Leach et al. (2016), also highlights the limits of market-based solutions and the importance of social movements to sustainability, emphasizing that ‘eroding the values of care … risks becoming socially unsustainable’ (2016, p. 8).

One reason the UN has likely struggled with a definition is related to the lack of engagement around this term in the scholarly literature. Certainly, a growing feminist critique of policy approaches to the environment has emerged, with authors such as Agarwal, Nelson, Perkins and Williams among a number of others, contributing to this work. Agarwal is an early and on-going contributor to this literature, beginning with her path-breaking work on land rights and food security (1994, 2000). Williams’ focus addresses questions of global finance (2015), while Nelson (2008, p. 446) points to the ‘limitations of Cartesian-inspired rational choice theory,’ and more generally the need for the discipline of economics to reject dualistic thinking in order to tackle the twin challenges of gender inequality and environmental well-being. Or as Perkins (2007, p. 233) aptly summarizes: Nelson calls for the ‘reintegration of economics and morality’ in her work. Perkins (2007, p. 239) also points out that: ‘feminist analyses are helping to generate new visions of social and ecological sustainability.’

While the number of scholars examining how to apply a gender lens to the environmental leg of the sustainability stool is growing, scholars agree that conceptualizing the term social sustainability has received far less attention (Boström, 2012; Colantonio, 2007; Lehtonen, 2004). Even as the term is increasingly evoked, few scholars define it. While authors have begun engaging more substantively around issues of social sustainability, many focus narrowly on assuring that social norms are conducive to environmental protection. Farley and Smith (2014, p. 59), for example, argue that ecological concerns should be at the center of sustainability discussions. A similar approach is taken by Axelsson et al. (2013, p. 215) who discuss key development aims, such as education, housing, health, and poverty, as well as some more abstract overarching concepts, such as social justice, human rights, and gender, but primarily in a context that links each of these to concrete environmental challenges (mining, energy, etc.). This in turn leads to an emphasis on concrete policy solutions that focus on ‘sustainable use of natural resources,’ rather than on sustainability more broadly.

For a minority of authors, social sustainability is more of a goal unto itself. Murphy (2012, p. 19) for example builds on earlier work by Littig and Griessler (2005) to provide what may be the most comprehensive review of the social sustainability discourse. Murphy emphasizes issues such as ‘Satisfaction of basic material needs and self-fulfillment,’ ‘Encouraging social interaction/social networks in the community’, as well as nineteen others that will be quite familiar to development practitioners and scholars. Littig and Griessler (2005, p. 74) also argue for a

gender-sensible redistribution of all the work that needs to be carried out in society, so that everyone can have a sufficient income from useful and publicly accepted work (e.g. by means of shorter working hours, childcare facilities, work-life balance for men and women, economising care work, etc.).

More recently Dillard, Dujon and King (2008, p. 5) have proposed ‘a working definition of the social aspect of sustainability’ that includes ‘both the processes that generate social health and well-being now and in the future and the social institutions that facilitate environmental and economic sustainability now and in the future.’²

A number of feminist scholars have explored related concepts, but without necessarily using the term social sustainability explicitly. Addabbo et al. (2004, p. 1), for example, argue that ‘[a]n important social dimension of sustainable human development is gender equity,’ and then emphasize the intergenerational cost that neglecting gender equality can have. King (2008, p. 129), similarly, points out that scholars focusing on sustainability overlook the importance of ‘unpaid work in families and communities and collective provision of public goods.’ Bengoa (2009, p. 169) argues that any ‘concept of sustainability of human life’ must acknowledge that such ‘a process … requires material resources but also contexts and relationships based on care and affection.’ Finally, although she does not directly relate the idea to social sustainability, Ilkkaracan (2013, p. 34) coined the term the Purple Economy, which she argues places ‘nurturing of human beings at the center’ of policy priorities. In other words, policy makers need to focus not only on Green or environmental concerns, but also assuring care receives sufficient attention. My paper will build off these definitions with an exploration of why social reproduction must be central to conceptualizing social sustainability, as well as discussing concrete policy measures that can assure this is the case.

Care labor, intergenerational equity and social sustainability

Linking social sustainability and social reproduction requires not only defining the concept of social sustainability, but also some attention to what social reproduction involves and how care labor, social reproduction and intergenerational well-being are linked. Floro (2012) defines social reproduction as involving ‘the maintenance of and provisioning for human life as well as to the enhancement of capabilities of people as workers, citizens and stewards of this planet.’ Central to this outcome is the provision of both paid and unpaid care labor. Relatedly, an important distinction made by Folbre (2006) is between various forms of unpaid labor, which can include self-care, direct care of others and indirect care. Folbre also points out that care labor is increasingly done for pay and so any policies that address the issue of how to better support care labor contributions need to focus on the fact that this labor is performed both in paid and unpaid contexts.

Particularly relevant for the issue of social sustainability is the centrality of care labor to assuring intergenerational well-being. Folbre (1994) has argued that children can in some ways be viewed as public goods. Economists define public goods as non-rival (or as having collective benefits) and non-excludable, which in turn leads to the argument that such goods create a free-rider problem. Children can be defined as public goods to the degree to which their future contributions are non-excludable and benefit society in general. Or as Folbre (1994, p. 86) argued: ‘[i]ndividuals who devote relatively little time or energy to child-rearing are free-riding on parental labor’ (Folbre, 1994, p. 86). Miller (2006) similarly emphasizes the importance of children’s physical and psychological development to later outcomes, which in turn affect the ability of children to thrive as adults.

Once parents and children are framed in this context, issues of intergenerational rights and responsibilities become apparent – if the raising of children benefits not just themselves, but society more generally, then there is a collective responsibility to raise children well. At the same time, many feminist scholars have argued that women’s economic vulnerability is linked to their heavy unpaid work burdens, with much of that labor being involved in providing care (Elson, 2016; UN Women, 2016).

The term social provisioning, as defined by Power (2004, p. 6) puts an emphasis on the importance of care labor as a collective pursuit, and as something that ‘[r]ather than be[ing] naturalized or taken as given, [makes] capitalist institutions and dynamics become subjects to be examined and critiqued.’ This requires giving thought to institutions like the family, the state and markets, as well as the forms of interactions that take place within and between these three institutions. A more meta-level approach to these issues is also provided by Power (2004, p. 6), who defines ‘economics as the study of social provisioning,’ arguing that doing so emphasizes ‘that at its root, economic activity involves the ways people organize themselves collectively to get a living.’ This definition suggests the impossibility of disentangling the economic and social pillars of sustainability. In addition to highlighting the key role that social relations play in shaping economics, her definition puts an emphasis on both the human actors and the processes through which this occurs and, as Power herself argues, helps make visible the importance of unpaid work.

Henderson (1982) brings together care labor and the environment when she introduces the concept of Cake Theory. She argues that two bottom and invisible layers of the economy are the environment and what she calls the love economy, the latter also being labeled as the ‘social cooperative.’ She, and other early feminist critics of growth theory, such as Waring (1988) have argued that if either of these layers are neglected, they put the rest of the economy at risk, and yet because they tend to be invisible/uncounted, they have historically been ignored by economists. The top two layers of Henderson’s graphic are the government and the private sector respectively, indicating the importance of thinking of nature, care labor and public sector infrastructure as intricately linked. The private sector in fact depends not only environment/natural resources but also the two most important components of the social – the household and the state (the layer just below the private sector, which supplies infrastructure, educational and health institutions as well as the rule of law, also key to economic functioning.)

Folbre (2006) focuses more on micro level decisions, as she works towards distinguishing unpaid and care labor from each other, arguing that it is important to disentangle the recipient of the care (a child, an elderly person, a sick/disabled adult, another adult or oneself) as well as identifying four categories of work – unpaid and not included in national accounting; unpaid but included in national accounting; informal sector market work; and more formal paid employment. She also distinguishes direct and indirect care from each other. Making such distinctions helps clarify how care labor is linked to capabilities and intergenerational well-being. Key to social sustainability is an emphasis on intergenerational care provision and particularly the care adults provide to children, to ensure that the next generation is adequately prepared for the future. Also important is how care labor contributes to assuring that all individuals’ basic human rights are met in the context of a capabilities framework. For the purposes of this paper, recognizing that the rights and capabilities of both care givers and care recipients are taken into account when conceptualizing why care labor is important to assuring social sustainability is key. Put another way, I argue that if the contributions of care labor providers are not adequately addressed, social sustainability will be at risk. In fact, Folbre (2001, p. vii) argues that women ‘have traditionally been assigned disproportionate responsibility for the invisible heart, but are no longer willing to accept it.’

In answer to an even more basic question – is social sustainability about maintaining the status quo, or about conceptualizing an ideal where societies sustain themselves through nurturing and care, I take the approach that the existing model of social reproduction is contributing to undermining effective social sustainability, in a context where women’s labor in particular is both unrecognized and/or exploited. In other words, I do not see the concept of social sustainability as providing support for the status quo, but instead as placing a stronger focus on the key importance of nurturing and care to sustainability, in general, through a focus on intergenerational justice and social well-being. Although a number of other factors, such as political institutions and mechanisms, as well as economic support for social processes are also necessary to obtain social sustainability, a focus on care and nurturing provides an opportunity to highlight the key role that women in particular already play in assuring social sustainability as well as linking gender equality to both economic and social sustainability. Relatedly it is worth considering that by interrogating the role of care labor in social sustainability, one can also ask questions about how norms and institutions are shaped, a point I will return to later.

Not only has the importance of care labor been demonstrated by many feminist scholars, but lack or loss of care is devastating to individuals and impedes development. A report by the Family Care International (FCI), International Center for Research on Women (ICRW), and the KEMRI/CDC Research and Public Health Collaboration (2014) for example discusses the devastating developmental consequences to children when their mother dies in child birth. Maternal death is associated with lower nutritional and educational outcomes for surviving children, as well as, not surprisingly, the persistence of poverty. There is also evidence more generally that neglect is detrimental to cognitive development and ability to function socially (see, for example, Weir, 2014), which in turn has long-term development implications. Children in particular need to be nurtured and cared for, in order to assure economic sustainability.

At the same time, the burden of care labor increases the economic vulnerability of women and girls, whose contributions to society often are unrecognized. This focus illustrates that two sometimes conflicting sets of rights are at stake here – the rights of care givers and the rights of care recipients. Whereas for a woman reducing her unpaid care responsibilities may contribute to gender equality, for a child, reductions in unpaid care, if these are not replaced by another source, can reduce that child’s ability to thrive.

As was mentioned in the introduction of this paper, these points were brought home very starkly during the 2020/2021 COVID-19 pandemic. As argued by Bahn et al. (2020, p. 698) COVID-19 uncovers ‘how the usual functioning of the labour market combines with gender roles to require more work from women than from men.’ A report produced by UN Women (2020, p. 8 and 9) noted that already ‘[b]efore COVID-19, women did nearly three times as much unpaid care and domestic work as men globally.’ The authors then provided data indicating that ‘unpaid care and domestic workloads’ had intensified, based on survey data from ‘22 countries in Asia and the Pacific and Europe and Central Asia.’ The data also indicated that whereas women and men both reported taking on additional care labor responsibilities, 37% of women, versus 26% of men, experienced an increase physical child care responsibilities. Slightly more evenly distributed was the increased burden of teaching children, which 36% of women, compared to 28% of men stated had increased.

Azcona et al. (2020) argue that care responsibilities are one factor contributing to declines in women’s employment since COVID-19. They discuss findings from the US and the EU as well as pointing to ‘[e]merging evidence from Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica and Mexico [that] shows that partnered women with children have experienced sharper pandemic-related drops in labour force participation than men – and these are most pronounced for women living with children under 6.’

Clearly, any strategy aiming to achieve gender equality and (social) sustainability must take into account the central, but burdensome role that women and girls play in nurturing and raising the next generation through their contributions in both the unpaid and the paid care labor spheres. Building off the arguments that care is a right and raising children is a contribution to the public good and merging that argument with a focus on the right to leisure, one can make both an equity and an efficiency argument for policies aimed at supporting families and particularly women, who are currently the primary providers of care labor.

A focus on the importance of unpaid work to the furthering of social sustainability also clearly raises the question of the extent to which sustainability is compatible with markets. Certainly, debates around the question of whether markets should play a central role in assuring sustainability have been raised before. O’Hara (1995) and Nelson (2008) are among those who argue for the need to go beyond markets to achieve sustainability. Ashford and Hall (2011, p. 55) as well are critical of the idea that market-based solutions alone can assure sustainable development, stating that ‘relying solely on the market to ensure that basic human needs [which they see as key to sustainability] are met is clearly not a viable option.’ This critique is put more sharply into focus once discussions of the importance of care work are emphasized. Or as Katz (2001, p. 717) argues: ‘the arena of social reproduction is where much of the toll of globalized capitalist production can be witnessed.’ In addition, empirical evidence suggests that even as care labor has become increasingly marketized (UNDP, 1999), workers, the majority of whom are women, are generally exploited, receiving low pay and working under precarious conditions (England et al., 2002).

The five Rs

What concrete steps are needed to identify specific strategies for achieving this aspect of social sustainability? A UN Women COVID-19 report (2020) concluded that: ‘[u]npaid care work needs to be measured, recognized, valued and, most important (sic), supported through diverse measures.’ Earlier work by Falth and Blackden (2009) gives credit to Elson for introducing the notion of three Rs – recognition, reduction and redistribution, and in a talk at Tufts (2016) Elson elaborates on this concept. As UN Women emphasize, support is also key, and I therefore argue for the addition of two more Rs to Elson’s trio: reinforcement and reward – to assure that the links between care labor and social sustainability are adequately recognized.

Elson’s primary focus in discussing recognition is on improving macroeconomic accounting processes in the context of data collection and aggregation. In other words, she argues that we need better measures of national income, which include estimates of unpaid labor. There is no doubt that more and better data are of key importance when it comes to formulating policies. Recognition, though, while essential, primarily involves the process of naming. It does not assure any explicit support for the unpaid work women actually do.

Reduction is of course also key to addressing gender inequality, and as Elson indicates, must involve technological changes and investments in infrastructure that reduce drudgery. Similarly, redistribution must involve multiple elements – assuring that existing unpaid labor burdens are redistributed within the household, as well as mechanisms for expanding non-household options for the sharing of care labor needs. The role of income and level of development is important to emphasize. In a number of countries, the majority of the population live in extreme poverty and subsistence activities take up a considerable amount of time. Basic labor-saving technologies are of particular importance to these populations.

Redistribution requires a focus on both other household members, as well as institutional settings. Having men take on more unpaid work is one important component of such a strategy, but so too is assuring that institutional, market-based care facilities are available and affordable. Unfortunately, redistribution remains rather controversial among a number of countries that signed into the SDGs. As a result, the language that was agreed on in negotiating SDG goal 5.4 (UN, 2015), is quite restrictive. SDG 5.4 emphasizes the need to:

Recognize and value unpaid care and domestic work through the provision of public services, infrastructure and social protection policies and the promotion of shared responsibility within the household and the family as nationally appropriate. (italics added)

The caveat that sharing of responsibilities will only be promoted where deemed ‘nationally appropriate’ is indicative of the fact that a subset of countries remains hostile to the promotion of the redistribution goal advocated by feminists. This in turn sheds light on why the United Nations has been unable to more vocally connect gender equality, policies to address unequal care burdens and social sustainability, a point I will return to later. It is also noteworthy that there is no emphasis on the importance of care labor itself to the achievement of social sustainability in the language that was approved.

While the 3Rs are key to gender equality, once social reproduction and social sustainability are explicitly linked, the limits of relying exclusively on the 3 Rs becomes clear, since emphasizing the link between social reproduction and social sustainability in turn puts an emphasis on the fact that all individuals should have the right to adequate care. Some unpaid/care labor should not be reduced, and to a small degree biological, and for the foreseeable future, also numerous social, political and material conditions make redistribution difficult, which underscores the importance of linking social sustainability and gender equality.

I therefore argue that reinforcement has to be another important strategy for assuring social sustainability. Two examples of policies where reinforcement is key relate to child birth and breastfeeding. More generally, reinforcement is important in contexts where redistribution is being resisted due to the argument that it is not ‘nationally appropriate,’ as seen in the language agreed on for SDG 5.4. If redistribution is not an option, women need more support for what they are socially expected to do, at least until norms change.

The fifth component – reward – needs to be thought of as having two sub-categories – reward for those who will never participate in paid employment and reward for those who are doing market-based care work, which is key to reducing the burden on others. Concerning the first group, women who specialize in unpaid labor are particularly economically vulnerable and deserve sufficient material support. Despite increasing pressure for women to enter paid employment, close to half of all women globally (and in some parts of the world even more) are not and will probably never be engaged in paid employment (World Bank, 2012), and with COVID-19 the number of women who are not in paid employment has risen even further.

Pushing paid employment as the short-term solution to gender inequality is therefore not realistic for three reasons – 1. Such solutions assume engagement in paid work, which is in many contexts not the norm; 2. Women who do enter paid employment are often in informal sector work which can be particularly exploitative; 3. Social sustainability depends on care labor becoming a priority, whether it takes place in the paid or unpaid sphere. Put another way, van Heemstra (2013, p. 11) eloquently articulates the danger of ‘[m]oving women from the unpaid Care Economy into the market, in a way which treats Care Work as a hindrance, rather than as essential to society and economy.’ This is why a focus on all five Rs, including reward, is essential.

When it comes to paid care provision, the role that not just gender, but also race, class and geography play is of key importance. Market-based providers of paid care labor are frequently highly exploited and underpaid (England et al., 2002; Katz, 2001). Women from low-income backgrounds are the providers of much of this care and particularly in wealthier country contexts, the vast majority of the workers are women of color and frequently vulnerable migrants. Additionally, as Carr et al. (2000) point out, differing strategies for supporting various types of vulnerable workers will likely be needed, depending on how the workers are paid (piece work versus wages), the degree of formalization and the physical work location (in private homes, in public institutions or within private sector firms).

More generally, any discussion of reward must acknowledge differences in vulnerability both within and across countries and the importance of decent work/living wages. At the same time, because the provision of market-based care labor is key to gender equality, institutionalized care needs to be affordable. This means that such services need to be subsidized, in order to keep prices low, while also assuring that the important work that market-based care providers do to assure social sustainability is fully rewarded. In addition, given that migration is closely linked to care labor provision, the ultimate responsibility for addressing inequities must rest with the global community, and not be seen just as the responsibility of individual nation states, a point I return to later.

Beyond recognizing the importance of care and unpaid labor to social sustainability, a focus on the five Rs facilitates important discussions around the question of how each of these Rs can/should be carried out, as well as determining when which R is most appropriate. When does recognition only require acknowledging, and when is reinforcement and/or reward also needed? When is reducing feasible and when is it counterproductive? Which individuals and institutions need to step up to assure that redistribution takes place? These are just some of the questions that can (and should) be asked once (unpaid) care labor is placed at the center of the sustainability agenda.

Folbre (2006) distinguishes between direct (e.g. changing diapers) and indirect unpaid care labor (e.g. collecting water or growing food for own consumption), as well as between paid and unpaid care labor, in light of the fact that lots of care tasks related to food, health care and education do have market substitutes. Rote tasks such as collecting water and fuel, which often take up a considerable amount of the poorest women’s unpaid labor duties, can be slotted most clearly into the category first requiring recognition and also being targeted for reduction. As discussed earlier, breast feeding is an activity that should be supported, while also assuring that alternatives such as affordable infant formula are available so women can choose what works best for them. Breast feeding in other words is an activity that depending on both individual and collective circumstances may require a strategy that combines recognition, redistribution and reinforcement.

Table 1 provides some examples of care labor activities, both those that are direct and indirect, as well as identifying what combination of the five Rs would be most appropriate in terms of a response, followed by various policies that should be put in place to assure that sufficient support is given to such activities. Tasks such as elder, child and more generally dependent care are defined by Folbre as direct care, whereas food preparation, laundry and housecleaning are defined as indirect care. These are the tasks where reinforcement is highlighted as one possible, but not the only strategy for furthering social sustainability.

Table 1. Labor examples and five R strategies.

Care labor activity	Strategy	Policies
Direct
Breastfeeding	Reinforce or redistribute and reward	Leave policies, flexible work arrangements, breast feeding rooms in workplaces, affordable formula, affordable care centers
Elder/dependent/child care	Reinforce or redistribute and reward	Leave policies, flexible work arrangements, decent wages and better work conditions for market based care centers, subsidized market based care.
Indirect
Water and fuel collection	Reduce and/or redistribute and reward	Infrastructure investments, labor and energy saving technologies
Food preparation	Reduce and/or redistribute and reward	Labor and energy saving technologies, decent wages and better work conditions for service sector workers
Laundry	Reduce and/or redistribute and reward	Infrastructure investments, labor and energy saving technologies, public laundry facilities, decent wages and better work conditions for market based laundry facilities
House cleaning	Reduce and/or redistribute and reward	Labor saving technologies, decent wages and better working conditions, cleaning collectives and other policies for addressing poor work conditions

It’s worth noting that both categories of tasks have been increasingly become marketized, and require a focus on workers being adequately compensated. Also worth noting is the importance of technological advancement and/or infrastructural investments in order to better support a number of these care labor activities. Each of these points will be expanded on below.

Triangulating the sustainability pillars

Two other key questions that a focus on five Rs helps illuminate are what kinds of overarching policies are needed to assure social sustainability and to what degree social, economic and environmental sustainability are potentially competing versus compatible aims? This is a question that scholars have grappled with previously. Perkins (2007, p. 230) for example points out that one ‘ecologically-related question is, if providers of formerly-unpaid work began to receive payment at equitable wage rates, would their overall consumption increase, fueling throughput-intensive growth?’ Some policy responses directly engage all three pillars, such as the development of solar-powered technologies to reduce unpaid labor burdens. On the other hand, some products, such as disposable diapers and various health care products, while they may reduce care labor burdens, are likely to negatively impact the environment.

Feminist scholars agree on a number of overarching policy solutions that can further gender equality. These include a focus on better data, infrastructure investments, technological innovations, better support for families, the provision of a social safety net and in the longer run a focus on norm change. In Table 2 I examine this list, with an emphasis both on where these fit into the five Rs, as well as on how the five Rs are also (inter)connected. Finally, I provide a preliminary exploration of possible synergies that can be achieved by thinking about environmental, economic, and social sustainability in tandem.

Table 2. Triangulating the three sustainability pillars.

Type of economic policy	5 R aim	Potential positive environmental impact
Time use surveys	Recognize
Infrastructure investments	Reduce and reinforce	Leapfrog technology
Labor and energy saving technologies	Reduce and reinforce	Leapfrog technology
Subsidized dependent care	Redistribute and reward	Economies of scale
Family leave	Redistribute and reinforce
Flexible work arrangements	Reinforce	Reduced commuting
Shorter work week	Recognize, reinforce and reward	Reduced commuting
Basic safety net	Recognize and reward
Norm change	Recognize and redistribute	Focus on positive norm change that addresses both gender and environment

As was discussed earlier, recognition is needed across the board, when it comes to both unpaid and paid care labor, given on the one hand its invisibility and the other hand the fact that much paid care labor is undervalued by the market. One key way that feminist scholars have advocated to make this labor more visible is through the implementation of time use surveys, which are valuable both in terms of providing quantitative measures of the activity and for tracking the impact of policy changes.

Investments in infrastructure, as well as labor-saving technological innovations, are two ways of reducing and/or reinforcing unpaid labor with the aim of increasing productivity and/or reducing drudgery. These innovations are particularly useful when it comes to reducing and/or supporting indirect care labor tasks. Whenever possible, such innovations should also address environmental and care labor concerns simultaneously. A 2016 publication by the Women and Gender Constituency (WGC), a coalition of civil society organizations focusing on gender and environment, provides some excellent concrete real-world examples, including women’s involvement in the proliferation of solar energy, and more effective ways of collecting water from a range of countries, such as Cameroon, India and Morocco.

An example of a technological advance that is key to improving both environmental conditions and women’s work conditions in the global south is solar-powered stoves. Solar power and laundry facilities also combine economic activity with environmental and labor-saving goals in a way that brings together the three sustainability pillars. More generally, in light of my earlier point about resource constraints facing a number of global south countries, concepts such as leapfrogging are key to addressing global inequities. Leapfrogging is the notion that rather than global south countries progressing through the same technological path that global north countries have followed, cooperation and research investments can contribute to technological advances that are developed jointly by global north and global south partners and which can address environmental issues, as well as reducing certain care labor burdens simultaneously (see for example UNCTAD, 2018).

While infrastructure investments and technology can reduce certain tasks, as women are increasingly entering into paid employment, they need affordable dependent care services, flexible work arrangements, and sufficient paid leave. A focus on market-based care services, not only for children but also for other dependents, is a growing concern in countries at various stages of development. As Hein and Cassirer (2010, p. xi) point out, although: ‘[a]ccess to childcare is sometimes thought to be an issue mainly in industrialized countries, … parents in developing countries are facing similar problems as family structures change and more women join the labor market either through choice or necessity.’ In other words, both global north and global south countries need to prioritize high-quality affordable care services.

Since women are also the primary providers of market-based care service labor, as emphasized in the discussion of Table 1, and are frequently underpaid and underappreciated in these roles, these services must be subsidized, to assure that services are affordable for consumers, while also providing adequate compensation to workers. In addition, such services must be regulated, to assure quality, and adequate support must be provided in order to train and support workers so they can deliver quality care.

The exploitative conditions facing many women who are working in the paid care sector also shines a light on the fact that the child care industry globally is very clearly shaped by geographic, racial and class hierarchies. Poor women from the global South are often providers of care labor for global elites (Katz, 2001), in a context where national and global inequality is worsening. In other words, improving conditions in the care economy can be a means not only to reduce gender inequality but also to in part address inequality based on race, class and nationality.

The environmental impact of subsidized dependent care may be less positive, since the use of disposable diapers and other labor-saving conveniences may increase, but the potential exists for economies of scale and centralization to contribute to lessening the overall environmental impact of such institutions as well.

Flexible work arrangements as well as sufficient paid leave, to facilitate both men and women’s involvement in paid and unpaid work are also needed. Feminists, such as Fraser (1994), have proposed that a shorter work week for both men and women would improve the gender distribution of labor. Additionally, given mounting evidence that shortened work weeks may also enhance productivity and improve environmental outcomes (Coote, 2014), policies that shorten the work week (without reducing compensation) are key to advancing gender equality, environmental, economic, and social sustainability simultaneously.

A basic safety net must also be available to those whose contributions to society remain in the sphere of unpaid care labor. Given that the majority of women are either minimally or never involved in paid employment, this has to be a key priority and should not be viewed as ‘hand-out,’ but as rewarding some of the most important work needed to assure social sustainability. Here the emphasis is on recognition and reward and the state needs to be tasked with providing this net. Whether this safety net is means tested or universal is beyond the scope of this paper to explore, but a universal basic income would be one possible way of implementing such a policy (see McLean, 2016; Rodríguez Enríquez, 2016).

Finally, a focus on norm change is also needed. To date few countries have tried to legislate shifts in gender norms that tackle household labor.³ Outside the context of gender norms, a number of scholars have already emphasized the important role norm change must play to assure environmental sustainability. Noteworthy though is that discussions by environmentalists who argue that norm change is needed to assure better resource preservation often do not explore where norms are formed in the first place and the key role of social reproduction in norm formation. One exception is the work of Skinner et al. (2012), who focus on how households play an important role in norm formation when it comes to both attitudes and behavior around the environment. In fact, early socialization and the formation of norms, not just around the environment, but also gender, occurs within households and families and is closely associated with the provision of care labor. This provides another reason for putting household dynamics at the center of discussions of how the various aspects of sustainability are linked.

Operationalizing (social) sustainability

Highlighting the importance of care labor to (social) sustainability not only helps identify examples where the environmental and social aspects of sustainability compliment or are in conflict with each other, it also brings into focus the fact that the rights of care givers and care recipients may at times be in conflict. Given that both gender equality and social reproduction are key to assuring overall sustainability, policies need to take into account empirical realities, including considerable rigidity when it comes to gender norms, while at the same time assuring that gender equality is a final objective. This in turn requires institutional structures where care labor is both more valued by society/markets and more equally distributed. More research is needed to tease out these complex relationships if sustainability and gender equality are both to be taken seriously.

I proposed the 5 Rs as a strategy to address these various concerns, with a focus on the need first for recognition and then as appropriate/feasible reduction and redistribution on the one hand and reinforcement and/or reward on the other. Obviously, the agenda being laid out is not going to be cheap to implement, but as others have pointed out, sustainability is an important investment in the future. Given the financial commitments needed, a focus on who should be responsible for achieving these priorities is also key. The ICPD Program of Action (POA) (UNFPA, 2014) clearly identifies the state as the main institution that must support families in their efforts to raise their children while also participating in paid employment. In Paragraph 5.3 assuring compatibility between labor force participation and parental responsibilities is identified as a priority, with ‘governments, in cooperation with employers’ being tasked with providing and promoting the ‘means to facilitate’ this through the provision of child care, various forms of leave, and the availability of flexible work schedules.

At the same time, given the resistance that a number of member states have even to the notion of shared responsibility, as well as the realities of local and global income inequality, relying on state support alone is naïve and ignores global inequities. As such, intergovernmental entities have an important role to play as well. The UN for example has and must continue to play a central role in rolling out the sustainability agenda, particularly given that sustainable development is so complex and globally interconnected that it can only be achieved through a multi-pronged, intergovernmental process. As pointed out by Sandler and Goetz (2020), the ‘UN has an operational function,’ and dedicating funds to assuring a vision of social sustainability that also addresses social reproduction/care labor is key. More generally, the UN is well positioned as an intergovernmental agency to tackle this complex problem, due to its ‘unparalleled convening power’ (UN, 2004, p. 26).

The UN is an invaluable producer and disseminator of knowledge, but to date far too little is known about how to assure effective social sustainability. The UN therefore needs to do more to explore in concrete ways how care labor is key to social sustainability. To some degree we know what does not work – war, violence, poverty, and hardship more generally, but we still have more work to do in terms of understanding how to create the macro-political, economic and social conditions that allow families to thrive. The 2020/2021 COVID-19 pandemic brought this point home very starkly.

More generally, the role of mental health and therefore psychology in facilitating social sustainability is under-researched. In addition, more thought needs to be given to the fact that socialization processes begin in the home at a young age. This has implications not just for gender equality and gender norm socialization but also when it comes to awareness and attitudes around the environment. An emphasis also needs to be placed on the question of conflicting rights and how to resolve this challenge by thinking more deeply about ways of protecting women’s right to leisure while at the same time protecting children’s and other dependents' right to care. This is particular true given that certain member states managed to insert the caveat into SDG Goal 5.4 stating that ‘shared responsibility was only a valid solution when ‘nationally appropriate’’ (UN, 2015).

Building off the argument of Farley and Smith (2014), more systems thinking is needed in tackling the challenge of sustainability. While my focus has been on the importance of highlighting the degree to which care labor is essential to any understanding of social sustainability, it is also important to note that pursuing social sustainability at the expense of the other two pillars is not an option. Systems thinking assures a multipronged, holistic approach to addressing sustainability and this in turn brings us back to the imperative of breaking down silos both within academia and within institutions, such as the UN.

The UN faces at least three challenges when it comes to operationalizing a sustainability agenda that takes both gender equality and social reproduction seriously. One is the lack of intellectual work that both the UN and the academic community have put into engaging directly with the concept of social sustainability. My paper provides a humble attempt to begin exploring how social reproduction, gender equality and social sustainability should be more directly linked, but more work is needed to unpack the concept of social sustainability, both as a stand-alone concept, and in terms of how it fits within the context of overall sustainability.

The second challenge relates to the current political climate and the lack of consensus when it comes to member states around the issue of gender equality (see Sandler & Goetz, 2020 for more discussion). As long as conservative governments continue to resist the idea of norm change as central to gender equality, social sustainability that also encompasses gender equality will remain elusive. Given that the UN’s mandate (n.d.) involves ‘enabling dialogue between its members,’ … the institution is limited to being ‘a mechanism for governments to find areas of agreement and solve problems together.’ In other words, the degree to which the UN can embrace a view of social sustainability that puts gender equality and care labor at its center is limited, in a context where member states themselves do not agree.

Still, the UN does remain a facilitator of intellectual thought and is best positioned to further the type of systems thinking that Farley and Smith (2014) as well as others have urged. Overcoming disciplinary boundaries when it comes to academia, as well as breaking down institutional silos within the UN is therefore also key to any serious engagement around the concept of sustainability if holistically defined.

Apropos, considerably more work is needed in terms of expanding our understanding of the ways the three pillars may be complimentary or competing. This paper highlights some examples where advancing social sustainability is complimentary with the aim of advancing environmental sustainability, as well as the opposite challenge. One important question that I did not address is the link between population growth and sustainability. Historically scholars have explored the degree to which high levels of fertility has played a role in putting pressure on natural resources. But as fertility rates continue to decline, another question requiring further attention concerns the role that below replacement fertility rates are going to play in reshaping economic realities and how this also is going to affect intergenerational equity in particular and social sustainability in particular.

The ability of the next generation to thrive requires investments not only in the education and health sectors, but also an acknowledgement that reproductive care labor is a key component of both current and future productivity. Therefore, when it comes to the issue of knowledge production, it is important that scholars explicitly articulate how feminist analysis can enrich and enlarge our understanding of social sustainability. The UN already embraces the concept of intergenerational equity and gender equality and yet the former is generally invoked primarily in the context of discussions of the need to preserve natural resources for the enjoyment of future generations, while the latter is discussed primarily in the context of assuring and promoting the current generation of women’s individual rights. Nelson (2008) warns about the pitfalls of Cartesian thinking and yet dualistic thinking continues to limit scholars and policy makers’ ability to think holistically about sustainability. Rarely is the concept of intergenerational equity for example invoked in the context of discussions of reproductive labor and yet a key component of the issue of intergenerational equity concerns the degree to which all humans, but particularly the young, receive the care labor required for them to function and thrive. Similarly, norm change is required both around the issue of care labor provision and our attitudes towards the environment, the two bottom layers of Henderson’s economic cake. And yet analyses of norms rarely brings these two themes together. More generally, while preserving natural resources is certainly of key importance to sustainability, both the challenge of assuring that care labor receives the attention needed, while also addressing gender equality, is also an important aim, and requires a focus on the five Rs – recognition, reduction, redistribution, reinforcement and reward.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

This paper is conceptual in nature, so does not include any data analysis.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jennifer C. Olmsted

Jennifer C. Olmsted is currently Professor of Economics and Director of Middle East Studies and Arabic at Drew University. She also is the founding director of Drew's Social Entrepreneurship semester. Previously she served as the Gender Advisor at the UN Population Fund (UNFPA). She has published in Feminist Economics, History of the Family, Industrial Relations, Journal of Development Studies, Journal of Middle East Women's Studies, Women's Studies International Forum, and World Development, among other outlets.

Notes

1 While this definition was removed from the World Bank web page sometime in 2016, the International Society for Development and Sustainability (n.d.) still contains this language, and attributes this definition to the World Bank as well.

2 The same definition is also repeated in Dillard, Dujon and Brennan (2013, p. 2). More generally the edited volume by Dujon, Dillard, and Brennan (2013) includes a number of chapters that operationalize the concept of social sustainability empirically, but aside from one chapter that discussed concrete policies for supporting working parents with disabled children, the centrality of care labor to social sustainability is not a theme the book takes up.

3 Cuba is one exception, as discussed by Toro-Morn et al. (2002).