Addressing the Unrecognized Burden of Paid and Unpaid Care in the MENA Region

Paid and unpaid care work remains largely unrecognized on a global level. Research shows that women carry out around three times the amount of unpaid and domestic work that men do, in addition to comprising most of the paid care workforce. The disproportionate load carried by women and particular groups such as domestic workers on one hand and the absence of men from care duties on the other are part and parcel of patriarchal dynamics influencing the recognition of care work.

Disproportionate rates of care work are exasperated in contexts of fragility and conflict and in contexts with high informality, lacking social protection inequitable labor regulations, and outright discriminatory social settings, which reinforce such dynamics of power and distribution of care activities.

Valuations of paid and unpaid care work around the world are highly dominated by two important factors. On one hand, national, regional, and global political economy in its neoliberal fashions has reinforced the idea of work being valued in terms of its monetization. As such, care work which is often unpaid or done in informal settings remains absent from official and unofficial labor valuations, including in official statistics and governmental data. On the other hand, social norms highly dictate how care work is seen, from shadowing the double work that women often do in occupying paid positions as well as performing unpaid activities, to normalizing the absence of men from performing unpaid care responsibilities.

More recently, research has shown how COVID-19 exasperated unequal unpaid work dynamics as it was accompanied by processes that include but are not limited to government-ordered lockdowns and additional care responsibilities, closures of schools and care facilities, and damages to small-to-medium level enterprises (SMEs), especially women-led ones. As such, domestic work, to a large extent carried out by women, witnessed major increases, not to mention the alarming rises in other concurrent developments such as gender-based and domestic violence.

It’s crucial to note that the distribution of care work as it is today, in both its paid and unpaid fashions, has implications that are not only limited to the amount of time being spent on care, but also include the social and mental well-being, the quality and accessibility of paid labor, and the participation in decision-making processes.

The State of Affairs in the MENA Region

All of the above factors are seen clearly in the MENA region, an area with volatile and unstable sociopolitical conditions, high rates of informality, discriminatory working conditions, recurrent conflicts, and extreme climate change conditions such as droughts, wildfires, and desertification. On a gender level, the region is not short of trouble and remains far from achieving gender parity across various fields, such as economic participation, political empowerment, and reaching UN Sustainable Development Goal 5, concerned with gender equality.

To begin with, it’s important to note that the MENA region is highly heterogeneous. While many social and political economy similarities can be noted, social contracts vary widely in general, and accordingly so does the repartition of paid and unpaid care work between different social groups. For example, the ratio of women’s to men’s work varies a lot between in Jordan, where it reaches 19:1, and in Tunisia, which is considered more progressive in terms of policymaking (albeit on a regressive track during the lack few months), where it reaches 6:1, which is also a considerable ratio. Employed married women in particular have high rates of work overall, whereas they combine their paid work activities and unpaid domestic work.

Gender and Labor Policies in the MENA Region

The MENA region has one of the highest female unemployment rates in the world, as only 25.2 percent of women aged 15 and above participate in the labor market. This number only increased by an alarming 0.17 percent annually over the last 30 years. On the other hand, numbers by networks such as Arab Barometer indicate that women’s participation in the labor force rests at 18 percent with the MENA region hosting 13 of the 15 countries with the lowest female labor force participation rates in the world.

MENA countries are yet to commit and implement labor regulations in line with the International Labour Organization’s standards. The majority of the region’s countries fall short of offering 14 weeks of paid maternity leave and women have significantly less access to social protection schemes such as pensions than their male counterparts. Access to overall social services such as healthcare is also disproportionately limited for women.

However, this doesn’t exclude the fact that participation in paid labor does not exempt women from domestic responsibilities, thus notable notions such as “double day” work apply to women’s working conditions. When combining paid and unpaid work, women work longer hours than men in almost all MENA countries, with the exception of Iraq and Qatar.

In addition, it’s often cited as paradoxical that despite women achieving higher education rates, employment rates remain disproportionately low, with research indicating that this can be primarily attributed to the current dynamics of opportunity structures. Analyses often focus on the supply side of the labor market as opposed to what the market is demanding, which is where the puzzle can be addressed.

Paid Care Work

Paid care sectors represent one of the main avenues of employment for women in the MENA region. Such sectors remain devalued, however, which is represented in care positions’ low pay, decreased benefits, and an overall skewed societal recognition.

The pandemic was a stark example of how certain sectors are underrecognized and how governmental intervention was minimal when it comes to providing adequate and timely policies. Women were at the forefront of emergency responses to crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic as they make up the majority of workers in the healthcare and social services in the MENA region, which in turn exposed them to virus risks.

On a general level, MENA governments lack adequate welfare policies to ensure social protection for the country’s poorest, resulting in the proliferation of private welfare schemes and a general lack of reliance on government services in many contexts.

Intersecting Oppressions

A Political Economy Issue at Heart

The MENA region is a highly unequal region, with its countries’ 50% poorest individuals left with less income than the poorest 50% in other comparable countries. Furthermore, unpaid and paid care work dynamics must be analyzed concurrently with the state’s role. Governance in the region remains highly authoritarian, with limited space for civil society and grassroots movements to organize and push for reforms or a fundamentally different social contract. Feminist mobilization has addressed relevant issues in many countries such as Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, Tunisia, and others but with limited impact on the division of care work.

Informality

Work within the informal sector remains widely prevalent in the MENA region, with its output amounting to about one-quarter of official GDP, on average, between 2008 and 2016. Women joining the workforce are to a large degree doing so via the informal sector, where protection and labor rights are lacking. Estimates by Oxfam indicate that around half of employed women in the region work in vulnerable positions.

Throughout the pandemic, official state responses to protect vulnerable workers remained minimal, especially in the case of informal wage workers, those in non-wage employment, and workers with minimum protection mechanisms such as agricultural workers, domestic workers, refugees, and small traders where women are over-represented.

When coupled with increasing domestic and unpaid care work, informal and vulnerable employment and unemployment decrease women’s entrepreneurial chances, and we argue that they also significantly impact their access to participation in political processes and leadership positions in formal settings.

Domestic Workers

Domestic workers comprise a big portion of care workers in the MENA region, a large segment of whom are employed under the grueling conditions of the Kafala system, often described as conditions of “modern-day slavery”.

The economic remuneration and working conditions that domestic workers are subject to while providing central care work in the MENA region reflect the lack of recognition and valuation of their contributions. Violations against domestic workers have been recurrent, noticeable in the 24-hour working cycle, the confiscation of passports, multifaceted instances of violence, and the lack of organizational and advocacy space, as well as many other issues.

However, two silver linings can be noted throughout the last decade. On one hand, national, regional, and global international attention to the issue has been at an all-time high recently. This is facilitated due to investigations into the state of affairs of domestic workers from international initiatives and other human rights organizations’ pressure. But crucially, the work done by grassroots organizations such as Egna Legna and the Anti-Racism Movement (ARM) in Lebanon has brought forward further attention to the matter and has played a role in galvanizing public opinion on domestic workers’ rights.

On the other hand, the economic deterioration that took place in many contexts has led to a decrease in the capacity of political and security authorities to scrutinize informal workers, which has arguably given more freedom for unregistered migrant domestic workers to seek out freelance work.

Rural Areas

Research has pointed out the significant disparities between urban and rural areas in Arab countries, particularly when it comes to economic affluence and access to livelihood opportunities. The case is similar for paid and unpaid care work, where unpaid and domestic responsibilities are noticeably different for women.

In countries such as Sudan, Egypt, and Iraq, women are involved in family-centered agricultural endeavors. Despite lowering female unemployment, women’s involvement in agriculture is still represented by a lack of parity with male counterparts.

On this front, climate change has had detrimental impacts on the conditions of farmers and agricultural workers across the region. Issues of equitable access to Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WASH) services remain highly present, with women less likely to have access to menstrual health services and sanitation facilities.

UNICEF adds that during crisis situations, which are rampant in the MENA region, “gender-based water insecurity is amplified, especially for refugee or internally displaced women and girls who face major barriers in access to basic services that are essential to their and their families’ health and well-being”.

Culture, Politics and Care Work

Patriarchal social structures continue to be prevalent across the world and in the MENA region where social stigmatization has put women under considerable pressure. Patriarchal power dynamics often disfavor women within and outside households, adding limitations to their access to capital and opportunities.

Social norms often also promote men’s engagement in paid labor, while giving them a pass for domestic responsibilities and promoting the allocation of domestic work, including care, within the remit of women only.

Women’s absence from political leadership positions has an important role to play in the division of paid and unpaid care work in the MENA region. As of 2022, women only occupy 18.3 percent of parliamentary seats.

On one hand, gender-sensitive policies and labor regulations such as maternity and paternity leaves, pensions, and other inaccessible schemes remain on the marginal ends of policymaking, exasperating unjust paid and unpaid care work dynamics. On the other hand, in a region where conflicts have been widely prevalent, the absence of gender-sensitive peacemaking is another notable hindrance to fairer social relations.

Alternative Paths

Much remains to be done in the MENA region to improve paid and unpaid care work and social realities on a gender level.

To begin with, it’s important to note that any alternative policy or non-policy processes moving forward cannot be done in a vacuum, but in recognition of existing neoliberal, authoritarian, and patriarchal structures at play. This goes as far as addressing the very fundamental social contracts underpinning such structures and the networks of actors, interests, and institutions reinforcing them.

When it comes to paid and unpaid work, research and advocacy have highlighted notable pathways towards the 5 Rs (recognizing, reducing, and redistributing unpaid care work and rewarding and representing paid care work). The MENA region hosts a number of social, economic, environmental, and political characteristics. As such, a tailor-made approach, as opposed to a one-size-fits-all one, is necessary.

More specifically, Arab states can:

• Adopt national strategies specific to care work, whereby labor regulations such as maternity and paternity leaves can be ameliorated, care facilities and institutions can be expanded, and the quality of care sectors and the conditions of those working within them can be addressed.
• Streamline data collection. The above strategies require the much-needed yet much-lacking statistics and data on care in the MENA region. As such, further work on an informational basis can contribute to an overall evidence-based approach to policymaking.
• Include stakeholders with firsthand experiences in their sectors in decision-making processes, such as women who predominantly work within care settings.
• Mainstream gender-sensitive lenses in policymaking, especially in relevant ministries where attention to women’s healthcare and care work is central, such as ministries of social affairs, health, and labor.

Building alternative pathways remains chiefly the remit of local populations, whereby support for greater social recognition of paid and unpaid work can be done through 1) advocacy and/or organizational endeavors, 2) syndicate- and sector-level demands, and 3) political movements that center progressive and socially just lenses into their approach.

Final Notes

Much has been said with regard to how paid and unpaid care work contributes to society in economic, political, human rights, and other dimensions. However, it’s important to reiterate that a focus on recognizing care work is a goal in and of itself for social justice and not just as a means for other ends.

A myriad of issues engulfs the world and the MENA region related to care work, including but not limited to aging populations, migration, economic crises, and more. Centering care, appreciating its main contributors, and organizing ourselves around social justice is an intrinsic responsibility.

This blog comes as part of an Asfari Institute study on care work in the MENA region. The study includes a literature review on different discursive, social, and political dimensions of unpaid and paid care work.