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Unpacking care blindness: how South Africa's social policies undermine women's economic empowerment and equality

Unpacking care blindness: how South Africa's social policies undermine women's economic empowerment and equality
Juhi Kasan
By Juhi Kasan
20 Nov 2024
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As care needs intensify, South Africa stands at a critical juncture to adopt a care-centred social policy that is ambitious, grounded in ethical care principles, and responsive to the diverse needs of caregivers and recipients alike.

The importance of care work in building sustainable and equitable communities in South Africa cannot be overstated. Care work supports not only caregivers and care recipients, but also reproduces and sustains society.

However, as the Institute for Economic Justice’s latest Care Economy paper highlights, current social and economic policies often overlook the value of care, limiting gender equity and broader social progress. 

This gap, referred to as “care blindness”, reflects a persistent lack of awareness in policy frameworks regarding the dynamics and value of (unpaid) care work.

The impact of this neglect is profound, leading to a limited understanding of the structural economic and social challenges women face. For instance, women with comparable education levels to men face an unemployment rate of 10.7% compared with 8.3% for men, demonstrating that barriers to gender equity extend beyond education and job access.

With South African women performing nearly twice as much care work as men, these responsibilities create a significant “care penalty” resulting in time poverty due to the emotional and labour-intensive nature of care responsibilities, and ultimately restricting the ability to secure and sustain stable employment.

Addressing this highly gendered penalty through a care-centred approach to social policy is essential for advancing gender equality and achieving meaningful social transformation.

What is care work?


Care refers to the activities, responsibilities, and relationships involved in meeting the physical, emotional and psychological needs of individuals such as cooking, cleaning, collecting water and managing household responsibilities.

The International Day of Care and Support (29 October) underscored the need for universal access to quality, affordable care, and the importance of recognising both paid and unpaid caregiving as foundational to social and economic well-being.

This observance serves as a reminder that care work, the work of life-making, is a public good that supports every facet of society, from economic stability to individual health and family resilience.

Government policy undermines social progress


The IEJ’s “Economies of Care” paper details how early post-apartheid macroeconomic strategies such as Gear (Growth, Employment, and Redistribution) set South Africa on a path of austerity, impacting on social policies such as those in the White Paper for Social Welfare (WPSW).

The WPSW, a foundational policy document that still informs contemporary welfare approaches, adopted a neoliberal “familialist” perspective, positioning families — primarily women — as primary caregivers for children, the elderly, and the disabled, instead of framing care as a shared social responsibility.

This has resulted in a fragmented and unstable care economy, heavily reliant on informal and unpaid care to provide essential family support. This model of caregiving, shaped by current social and economic policies, places a significant strain on households — particularly on women, who often lack adequate resources, stable employment, and are more likely to face severe poverty.

Social grants, like the Child Support Grant (CSG), provide critical but limited assistance in this context. However, these means-tested cash transfers fail to address the structural caregiving burdens borne by women, creating dependency on family networks, particularly in households where grants are the main source of income.

In many households, grants like the CSG serve as an essential lifeline, often supporting not only children but entire families.

Yet the CSG lacks a “caregiver” component to formally recognise or compensate for the critical care work involved in managing and mediating social assistance.

This care work requires transforming the grant’s monetary value into essential resources like food and shelter through largely unpaid and undervalued labour.

Currently set at only R530 per month in 2024, the CSG falls far short of meeting even a child’s basic needs, as it sits well below the food poverty line, which was R760 per person per month in 2023.

In addition to the absence of a caregiver component, the dismally low value of the grant means that women, particularly low-income black women who are most often responsible for managing these funds, must contribute additional unpaid labour to stretch this limited amount to cover the essential needs of entire households — a task that demands considerable emotional and physical work. 

While the CSG was not originally intended to reshape household gender roles or alleviate the burden of care, it highlights how social welfare policies, when designed without a care-centred lens, can unintentionally increase the caregiving burden on women, resulting in numerous negative social and economic outcomes.

This is a clear example of “care-blindness” in policy design, where social welfare programmes fail to account for the broader web of care relations, labour, and gendered dynamics that underpin positive social outcomes.

Through various examples of social policy and social welfare programmes, it becomes evident that the absence of a care-focused lens exacerbates gendered expectations and inequalities, leaving caregiving as an unpaid responsibility predominantly shouldered by women, with significant social and economic consequences.

A care-centred approach to social policy


Social programmes like the Child Support Grant (CSG) exemplify a “care-blind” approach within South Africa’s social policy — an approach that overlooks the essential dynamics of caregiving.

However, this is not an isolated example; a pattern of care-blind social programmes can be traced back to an overarching policy framework that reinforces care as a private responsibility rather than a shared societal obligation. This oversight places a heavy burden on caregivers, limiting economic opportunities and deepening gender inequities.

In contrast, a care-centred social policy would recognise the crucial role of caregiving while fostering a sustainable approach to social and economic progress.

South Africa is overdue for such a shift, necessitating a comprehensive overhaul of its approach to social and economic policy.

To achieve this, a care-centred social policy would need to challenge entrenched paradigms that devalue and marginalise care work. Reimagining care as a collective societal responsibility rather than an individual burden would address deeply rooted gendered, racialised, and class-based inequalities within the care economy.

Critical questions like “who provides care, and why?” and “how can this work be effectively supported?” would guide policy development, embedding the realities of caregiving into frameworks that actively confront systemic, gendered and patriarchal norms perpetuating inequality.

Implementing a care-centred agenda would demand an anti-austerity approach, where adequate resourcing becomes a vital mechanism for advancing gender equity and social transformation.

Using frameworks like the “4Rs” — recognition, reduction, redistribution, and revaluation — would elevate care to the status of essential public infrastructure.

This approach would require substantial public investment and a decisive departure from austerity, recognising care work as a public good foundational to economic and social stability.

If adequately resourced, care work could shift from a burdensome responsibility to a societal enabler, empowering women, strengthening social cohesion and fostering broad economic resilience.

A care-centred policy would emphasise interdependence as a core human value, reframing care not merely as a necessity, but as a cornerstone of human dignity and societal progress.

South Africa has the opportunity to set a powerful precedent, redefining care work as a respected, supported and indispensable foundation of a thriving, equitable society.

As care needs intensify, South Africa stands at a critical juncture to adopt a care-centred social policy that is ambitious, grounded in ethical care principles, and responsive to the diverse needs of caregivers and recipients alike.

Such a policy would not only alleviate the economic and social burdens on caregivers, but also elevate care work as central to social equity and economic resilience.

By fostering a nuanced understanding of caregiving roles, social policy could transition from reinforcing individual self-sufficiency to embracing interdependence as a core societal value, setting the foundation for a more just and inclusive future. DM

Juhi Kasan is a feminist economics researcher at the Institute for Economic Justice.

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