By Michael Gwarisa
Global health leaders have called for governments to recognise care work as essential economic infrastructure, arguing that investing in women-led care solutions is critical to strengthening health systems and driving economic growth.
The call was made during a high level side event recently hosted by Pathfinder International and convened in partnership with Women in Global Health (WGH) at the World Summit for Social Development.
The meeting, titled Investing in Women-Led Solutions for Social Development, brought together senior government officials, researchers and civil society leaders who warned that failure to invest in the care economy undermines public health, gender equality and national resilience.
Delivering remarks at the event, Dr Sultani Matendechero, Deputy Director General at Kenya’s Ministry of Health, said global economies must stop treating care work as invisible labour and begin recognising it as a strategic investment.
Women represent about 70 percent of the health and care workforce, yet they remain concentrated in low paid or unpaid roles,” he said. “Investing in care work is not just a social imperative. It is sound economic policy.”
Dr Matendechero said Kenya has begun institutionalising care investments through its universal health coverage programme. As part of the reforms, the government has transitioned more than 100,000 community health workers into compensated “community health promoters,” each serving an estimated 500 people with primary healthcare, disease prevention and health promotion services.
He said the financial returns on preventive care justify larger national commitments. “For every one shilling we invest in disease prevention and health promotion, we save upwards of nine shillings that would have gone into curative or rehabilitative services,” he said. He added that Kenya now views care work as “economic infrastructure” that underpins human capital development and long-term economic growth.
Dr Matendechero also praised innovations emerging from Pathfinder International’s Women & Co platform, which supports social enterprises such as FemVive. Through these initiatives, women entrepreneurs generate income while improving community access to health products. He said such models demonstrate how care work can shift from unpaid labour to sustainable livelihoods.
Research experts at the event also emphasised the need for structural change. Ms Sonia Phalatse, a Researcher at the Southern Centre for Inequality Studies, said global policy discussions must move beyond treating care simply as a tool for GDP growth.
“Investing in care creates jobs and supports women’s participation in labour markets, but care also has transformative potential that goes beyond economic resilience,” she said. She warned that current development frameworks often rely too heavily on what feminist economists call “smart economics,” which promotes investments in women for productivity gains while ignoring systemic gender inequalities.
“This framing assumes that structural barriers such as discriminatory laws or unequal gender norms will somehow adjust themselves,” Ms Phalatse said. “It risks recasting women as the solution to crises they did not create, expecting them to be endlessly resourceful and endlessly resilient.”
Ms Phalatse said a transformative care agenda must include three priorities: redistribution of care responsibilities between households, communities and the state; formal recognition and professionalisation of care work; and ensuring representation of caregivers in policy decision-making. She said governments must align macroeconomic policies, taxation, labour regulations and social protection measures with the goal of building caring and inclusive economies.
“Countries must ask whether their budgets are gender responsive and whether investments reduce unpaid care burdens,” she said.
Adding an intergenerational perspective to the dialogue, Ms Tiffany Dove-Abbam, Founder and Executive Director of the Dove Foundation for Global Change, said demographic changes are reshaping the care economy globally.
“We are witnessing two large shifts at once: an ageing population needing more care and a growing demand for meaningful work,” she said. “If we bring these together, care can become an intergenerational engine of employment and knowledge transfer led by women.”
Ms Dove-Abbam said it is contradictory that women form the majority of the care workforce yet continue to experience poorer health outcomes. “Women make up 70 percent of the care economy, yet they live 25 percent of their time in poorer health than men,” she said. She added that unpaid labour remains the backbone of many care systems, particularly for young women, who account for roughly 60 percent of unpaid caregivers in some countries.
She called for policies that support the transition of young women from unpaid caregiving into formal care entrepreneurship. She said programmes such as Women & Co could help governments formalise this shift and ensure young women gain visibility and leadership opportunities within the care sector.
“Yes, women sustain the care economy, but they’re not present in leadership positions,” she said. “When we make this transition, we must ensure young women are added to leadership spaces.”
The event also showcased efforts by Women in Global Health to build leadership capacity among early- and mid-career women. WGH operates more than 50 national chapters and provides Gender Transformative Leadership training, advocacy programmes, media engagement initiatives and a global Speakers Bureau that elevates the voices of women leaders in health.
Speakers agreed that transforming the care economy requires coordinated action from governments, civil society and the private sector. They urged countries to treat care systems with the same priority given to physical infrastructure such as roads or digital networks.
As Dr Matendechero concluded, “From invisible labour to visible leadership, let us invest in women and in women-led care as a strategy for a more equitable and prosperous world.”
