On the occasion on the International Women’s Day, we have updated our EU Care Atlas. Discover the new data available on Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC), and Long-Term Care.
Within our joint project with FEPS "Making Europe #Care4Care!", we have developed the EU Care Atlas in 2022. This tool maps how care deficits directly relate to inequality and how these deficits urgently call for more supportive and needs-based care measures. It offers data on the three dimensions of the gender earnings gap on an EU average and in EU member states.
The disproportionate burden of unpaid care responsibilities and women’s “double shifts” of paid and unpaid work become most obvious by browsing through the datasets on the gender gaps in time use on paid and unpaid work. 75% of unpaid and domestic care work in the EU is done by women. The inequal share in care responsibilities directly feeds into gender inequalities and solidifies them in the long term.
On the occasion of the International Women’s Day in 2024, we have updated the Care Atlas. It focuses on the European Care Strategy, which we analyse in our Policy Study on the European Care Strategy. Thus, the Care Atlas 2.0. is based on the two main pillars of the strategy: Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC), and Long-Term Care.
Concerning ECEC, parents (most often mothers) increasingly face a double burden in balancing paid work and caring responsibilities. We need an expansion of childcare services, accessible to all regardless of their socio-economic background, and a high intensity to enrolment.
When it comes to Long-Term Care, we need concrete measures to ensure good and affordable quality care for all, including good working conditions for care workers. Already today, and even more so with view to the future and demographic shifts both on the supply and demand side for long-term care.
Care work – or rather the unequal distribution and lacking acknowledgement of paid and unpaid care work – directly feeds into the EU Gender Earning Gap, which is currently estimated at 36,7%. Browse through our Care Atlas to learn more about the three dimensions of the Gender Earning Gap, namely the Gender Pay Gap, the Gender Employment Gap, and the Gender Hours Gap, and learn more about the unequal distribution of time spend on paid and unpaid work by men and women in EU member states.
Browse through the updated EU Care Atlas and discover how care deficits directly feed into the gender overall earnings gap, perpetuating gender inequalities:
Agnes Mach
FES EU Office
Laeticia Thissen
Foundation of European Progressive Studies
The project is a collaboration with the Foundation for European Progressive Studies (FEPS).
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This report analyzes how careworkers face multiple inequalities and provides an EU-wide comparison. Download publication as PDF. Download publication here.