Employment and care: The policy problem, gender equality and the issue of choice

The issue of how to reconcile employment and care work has become much more prominent on the policy agenda over the last decade, often as a means of tackling a wide variety of problems ranging from low fertility to meeting the costs of aging societies and addressing child poverty. This article prioritizes gender equality and argues that the issue of care is key to developing policies in this field. Family and labour market changes have been dramatic and have presented modern welfare states with new social risks. Policy makers have tended to promote women's employment and to assume that care work will increasingly be commodified. This article reviews the nature of care work and the existing models for providing for it, and then suggests that if the terms and conditions for the shift to an adult worker model family are to be more gender equal, then a variety of policies encompassing time, money and services are necessary if both women and men are to be able to choose to engage in paid and unpaid work.