Of course, it's always important to centre our conversation on unpaid care in a global context. We know, of course, that the work of care—the work of social reproduction and the daily and generational production and reproduction of the population—is the stuff that keeps everything else going. It's the architecture that makes all of our market interactions and all of our aspirations possible.
Your question about the role for employers is a good one. Of course, there isn't one magic role for employers, because we have employment situations that are varying sizes, varying scales, varying locations and so on.
I can give a few examples of what is useful. Certainly, we know—and there's a theme to what I'm going to say—that supporting and speaking loudly in support of a child care system is of huge benefit to families with young children.
However, what we also see at the employer level is that employers can play a big role in both supporting caregivers and creating a culture where care is shared. One question that often comes up is how we can encourage fathers, for example, to take more paid leave and to take more time for caregiving. It can start at the very first conversation a prospective parent has with his or her employer or HR department, where that employer assumes they will take the maximum amount of leave.
The conversation is not then that the person seeking to take, for example, parental leave or leave to care feels that they have to negotiate the smallest amount possible, but the conversation begins with assuming the maximum amount and creating a culture where care is shared among employees. That can go some good distance in beginning to shift those kinds of gender norms in households and care work.
Another thing is being cautious about working from home and flexibility. Sometimes it has not worked out super well for women. The lack of face time and the lack of opportunities for the kinds of conversations that would lead to promotion tend not to be necessarily evenly shared, so there are some gender cautions there as well.