Columnist urges shared care work as foundation of climate sustainability

Unpaid caregiving should be treated as part of climate sustainability work and shared more fairly between women, men, communities and the state, columnist Patmei argues in her "Mondays with Patmei" column for Mindanao Times.

The writer says the reflection came from a Climate Sustainability for Entrepreneurs workshop held in Davao City on October 13 to 14, facilitated by Sustina and Upgrade Innolab under Circulab, an acceleration program for circular ventures supported by the EU-PH Green Economy Partnership. She co-founded GreenTayo, an initiative of the Mothers for Peace Social Enterprise, Inc. that aims to make refilling of local and natural home and personal care products accessible and affordable to grassroots communities. According to the column, GreenTayo is one of seven grantees chosen from more than 50 applicants in Circulab's pioneering cohort.

Drawing on her own experience of starting a venture in her 50s while caring for two family members, including an 86-year-old mother, the writer argues that caregiving is an invisible infrastructure that keeps households and economies running but is left out of GDP figures and resilience planning.

She cites figures showing that Filipino women spend about 28 hours a week on unpaid care work, more than three times what men spend, and that women's labor force participation is around 50.3 percent compared with 72.5 percent for men. She adds that the Philippines is expected to become an aging society by 2030, which she says will likely add to the load carried by women.

The column points to the Philippine Commission on Women's work, with Oxfam Pilipinas, on a National Care Economy Policy Framework, which the writer notes is still being finalized. She quotes the PCW as saying that "care work should be a responsibility shared by all, not a burden borne disproportionately by women alone."

The writer calls for investment in care infrastructure, men taking on domestic work as equals rather than as helpers, and an "everyday bayanihan" that supports caregivers routinely, not only during disasters. She also notes that women across Mindanao are already leading in roles ranging from ancestral-domain planning and forest defense to cooperative leadership and climate-smart farming.