Sunday Full Program With Abstracts

• 11:30 a.m. - 1:30 p.m. - Early Career Researchers/Postdoc Workshop (private invitation only)
• 2-30 p.m. - New Scholars and Doctoral Associates Presentations
  • *The above pre-conference events are sponsored by the Gender, Migration and the Work of Care Project.
• 1-3:30 p.m. - Walking Tour: A Worker’s History of Spadina Meet at Hart House
• 5-8 p.m. - Welcome Reception and Keynote, Great Hall
• Keynote Panel: Global Policy and the Care Economy: A Discussion of the International Labour Organization report on Care Work and the Future of Decent Work
• Panelists Laura Addati, International Labour Organization, Italy, “Transforming Care Work and Care Jobs for the Future of Decent Work.”

The presentation will review the key findings of the ILO care work report and its contribution to the recommendations of the ILO Global Commission on the Future of Work, which has marked the ILO’s centenary in 2019 by a landmark report on the future of work. The Global Commission calls for the implementation of a transformative and measurable agenda for gender equality for the future of work. This human-centred agenda includes making unpaid care work an equal responsibility of men and women and transforming the care economy by promoting public investments in quality care services, decent work policies for care workers, support of unpaid care workers wishing to return to paid employment and the revaluing and formalization of paid care work. For the world of work begins at home.

• Eleonor Faur, Universidad Nacional de General San Martin, Argentina, “The Future of Care Work.”

This presentation will ask what’s new about the ILO report from a conceptual and political perspective, how does it fit on UN conceptualization of work and care, and how it could be useful for national governments and local activists. It will state that the ILO report not only offers a huge amount of robust data but also a solid conceptual framework sustained in the contributions of feminist research, in particular in relation to the conceptualization of “work,” its recognition of unpaid care and domestic work as part of this concept and its links to women’s employment and paid care work as a “circle” of disadvantages. In addition, it advocates for transformative care policies. Finally, it will reflect on the political opportunity of launching this report within a complex international context, in which the global discussion on the “the future of work” coexists with an exponential growth of conscious and claims for equal rights for women and a neoliberal turn in policies in many countries of the world.

• Susan Himmelweit, Open University, United Kingdom, “The Economic Contribution of Care Work.”

This presentation will focus on how care work, both paid and unpaid, is an integral and increasingly important part of the economy. The ILO report showed how public investment in care partly pays for itself by the employment and fiscal returns it generates. I will show, across a range of countries (including Canada), that compared with investing in construction, the usual focus of stimulus policies, investing in care produces more employment opportunities, reduces rather than increases gender employment gaps and generates a wide range of other economic benefits. These benefits would remain, and in some cases be strengthened, if employment in care became more decent work.

• Sonya Michel, University of Maryland, United States, “The ILO and the Global Tilt in Care Resources.”

I will discuss how the ILO report addresses the issue of migrant women care workers and the families they leave behind. While it notes that migrants make up a large proportion of careworkers in many wealthy countries and calls for protection of certain migrant rights, the report does not fully examine the impact of women’s absence on children and other relatives who stay in sending countries. I will review the literature on this phenomenon and place the report within the context of how previous ILO initiatives on carework have dealt with the “global tilt” in care resources, the inequalities it engenders, and what all of this says for the prospects of reaching global sustainable development goals.

The reception and panel will be free and open to members of the community, including members of the University of Toronto, community members, activists, union groups, and policy groups.