What are care insurance policies?
Care insurance policies are public insurance policies, from native to nationwide, that form how care work is acknowledged, supplied, supported, and shared throughout society.
Coverage is only one pillar inside a care system – that’s, how societies set up care work by insurance policies, legal guidelines, budgets, providers, and infrastructure that assist guarantee individuals can each give and obtain care.
UN Girls promotes care insurance policies constructed across the 6R framework:
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Acknowledge care as the muse of thriving and gender-equal societies.Cut back energy-intensive unpaid home care work duties by infrastructure and expertise.Redistribute duties extra pretty between men and women, households and the state, households, communities, and companies.Reward the tens of millions of care employees with truthful pay, social safety, and respectable working situations.Symbolize care employees and caregivers in policymaking, organizations, and choices that have an effect on their lives.Useful resource care methods with public financing for care insurance policies, providers and infrastructure, requirements and coaching.
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By organizing care work as a public good and never solely a personal duty, care methods – and the insurance policies that uphold them – make an actual distinction in individuals’s lives. That is very true for ladies and ladies, who carry nearly all of care duties, paid and unpaid.
How are care insurance policies constructed – and by whom?
Care coverage doesn’t have one path of improvement – and in lots of locations, it continues to evolve, formed by governments in collaboration with caregivers, care receivers, the non-public sector, civil society organizations, and group companions.
Constructing a care system or creating a brand new coverage is commonly a years-long course of. It requires proof, dialogue, coordination, and sustained dedication.
A robust care system lays the muse for sensible options that strengthen households, develop alternatives for ladies, and construct extra resilient economies and communities.
Of the greater than 12,000 contributors to Chile’s public dialogues:
28.1 %
are Indigenous Peoples and Afrodescendants
12.2 %
are migrants
38.8 %
recognized themselves as actively in want of care assist
80 %
are girls
Care coverage in Chile: from a caregiver’s perspective to a president’s signature
In Chile, UN Girls labored alongside the Authorities to assist the design, implementation, and documentation of the general public session course of. These consultations, in flip, knowledgeable Chile’s first Nationwide Help and Care Plan and the primary Nationwide Help and Care Coverage (2025–2030).
In early 2026, the Chilean president signed the historic Chile Cuida (Chile Cares) into legislation, establishing the suitable to take care of others, the suitable to obtain care, and the suitable to self-care.
The legislation offers the idea for Chile’s new Nationwide Help and Care System, which features a nationwide community (additionally known as Chile Cuida) that’s already connecting establishments, programmes, and providers to assist 70,000 individuals who want help with day by day actions, in addition to for his or her caregivers. As we speak, the Chile Cuida community has greater than 216,000 registered caregivers.
Care coverage in Nigeria: state-level coverage formed by family knowledge – and a world alliance
In Cross River State, Nigeria, time-use surveys and a government-led technical working group – with assist from UN Girls – are actively informing Nigeria’s first state-level care coverage.
Carried out in 2024, the time-use survey measured how people allocate their time throughout paid and unpaid work, private care, and leisure. With 3,600 households collaborating, the findings have been stark: Girls spend 5 instances as many hours on unpaid care work, per day, as males.
The family survey proved how necessary it’s that care work be seen, valued, and supported – and that investing within the care financial system isn’t solely good for youngsters’s well-being, however for ladies’s financial empowerment and group improvement.
For inclusive-care advocates – like artist and educator Hannah Bassey-Duke, who serves on the technical working group – the State’s coverage improvement course of has felt like the primary time that the voices of caregivers and households are actually being heard. Bassey-Duke’s work with youngsters with disabilities helped her perceive the overwhelming duties positioned on moms. Many needed to depart their jobs or companies as a result of inexpensive care providers and educated professionals have been restricted. “Day-after-day”, explains Bassey-Duke, “I see moms who’re exhausted, remoted, and carrying unpaid care duties with little recognition.” Not solely are State policymakers gathering proof from households, they’re gaining inspiration from stakeholders worldwide. Cross River State turned the primary authorities entity in West and Central Africa to hitch the World Alliance for Care, launched by Mexico’s Nationwide Institute of Girls and UN Girls. The Alliance consists of greater than 350 members: governments, non-public sector companions, and tutorial, civil-society, and worldwide organizations. Kenya lately launched its first Nationwide Care Coverage following public dialogues and new knowledge – together with a time-use survey supported by UN Girls. The Authorities additionally invested in a Nationwide Care Wants Evaluation, which recognized vital gaps in care providers and infrastructure – gaps that, as soon as stuffed, will instantly enhance the day by day lives of girls and households and create jobs. One such infrastructure hole is entry to wash water. Particular person households may spend hours fetching water for day by day ingesting, cooking, and cleansing – a duty overwhelming shouldered by girls and ladies. As a part of its care agenda, the Laikipia County Authorities has distributed greater than 50,000 water tanks to considerably scale back the time and depth wanted for this care-work activity. In West Pokot County, a niche in care providers is being addressed with the development of a brand new childcare centre inside Bendera market. An absence of childcare choices will now not be a barrier for market distributors. The affect of the Nationwide Care Coverage – drafted with UN Girls’s direct assist – is already changing into seen by these easy however revolutionary native options. There isn’t a one-size-fits-all strategy for constructing and implementing care insurance policies. Each authorities follows its personal path, formed by its historical past, priorities, and the individuals driving change. Day-after-day, tens of millions of girls work tirelessly to maintain their households and communities. They handle households, collect meals, water, and gas, care for youngsters and relations, and supply emotional assist. This unpaid work interprets to much less time to hunt schooling, make an revenue, and even take part in public life and leisure. Policymaking that accounts for his or her experiences – by time-use surveys, wants assessments, public dialogues, and drawing on the 6R framework – is what makes for efficient and inclusive care methods. From the second we get up to the time we sleep, care work – paid and unpaid – shapes our lives, economies, and communities. With out care work, societies would merely cease functioning. Be taught extra TransformCare is UN Girls’s world initiative that addresses the undervaluing and unequal division of care work to enhance the lives of girls and ladies worldwide. By way of this initiative, UN Girls is supporting governments and companions throughout 52 nations to develop, undertake, and implement nationwide care methods and insurance policies that acknowledge, scale back, redistribute, reward, and signify paid and unpaid care work. In 2025 alone, 25 care-related legal guidelines, insurance policies, and plans have been developed or strengthened with UN Girls’s assist – together with these in Chile, Kenya, and Nigeria.Care coverage in Kenya: the place knowledge helps to shut infrastructure gaps
Why does it matter who shapes care insurance policies?
Care work retains the world operating
