Olena Strelnyk speaks at the high-level forum “Transforming Care Systems for Inclusive, Resilient and Gender-Equal Economies”

On 11–12 May Olena Strelnyk, Doctor of Sociological Sciences and Senior Research Fellow of the Department of Social Structures, took part in the high-level Europe and Central Asia forum organised by UN Women, “Transforming Care Systems for Inclusive, Resilient and Gender Equal-Economies”

Here are the main points of her contribution:

1. On the limits of the economic case for care. The great majority of contributions to the forum considered investment in the care sector through the prism of economic benefit: GDP growth, higher female economic activity, increased tax revenues. Yet if the public discussion of care and care work is built exclusively on the logic of productivity, that line of argument carries a risk: it will exclude the most vulnerable groups of the population and those whose care is the least “efficient” in terms of its contribution to economic development and human capital. Caring for a person with dementia in the last years of their life does not fit “investment” rhetoric the way that, say, childcare does.

2. On the gap between attitudes and practices. Data from studies by IPSOS and King's College London across 29 countries (2026) record that 73% of respondents believe responsibility for childcare should be shared equally between women and men, and 64% do not see men's involvement in care as a threat to masculinity. Representative surveys in Ukraine confirm this trend. In practice, however, men make up only 20–30% of those caring for adult family members and older people. So the problem does not come down to stereotypes alone. As long as a gender pay gap exists, the distribution of care duties within a family will be determined by economic rationality, and not by value attitudes alone. What is subjectively experienced as free choice is the cumulative result of a structural logic set in motion long before any particular decision is taken.

3. On the asynchrony of progress. A telling paradox can be observed in Ukraine: society displays openness to the presence of women in the public sphere — in politics, in business, in the armed forces. At the same time most respondents continue to regard motherhood and the family role as a woman's primary vocation. Progress in the public sphere outpaces the transformation of the distribution of roles in the private one.

On rethinking the discourse of care. In gender studies care has traditionally been conceptualised mainly through the category of “burden”. For a broader public dialogue — beyond an academic and feminist audience — this discourse needs to be widened: care as an individual and collective value, as that which secures social cohesion. Drawing on the work of Joan Tronto and Virginia Held, one can argue that the right to receive care and the right to give it are basic rights of citizens. Care should take a central place on the social and democratic agenda rather than remaining a private matter for families.