“There is no time for rest”: Gendered CSR, sustainable development and the unpaid care work governance gap

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/beer.12190
• Published date: 01 October 2018
• Author: Lauren McCarthy
• Date: 01 October 2018

SPECIAL ISSUE

“Thereisnotimeforrest”: Gendered CSR, sustainable

development and the unpaid care work governance gap

Lauren McCarthy

Centre for Research into Sustainability

(CRIS), School of Management, Royal

Holloway, University of London, Egham, UK

Correspondence

Lauren McCarthy, School of Management,

Royal Holloway, University of London,

Egham, Surrey, TW20 0EX.

Email: lauren.mccarthy@rhul.ac.uk

Unpaid care work,including child care, elder care, andhousework, is unremunerated workessential

to human survival and flourishing. Worldwide, women disproportionally carry out this work,

impacting upontheir ability to engage in other activities,such as education, employment,or leisure.

Despite a growing number of businesses engaging in “gendered CSR,”in the form of women’s

empowerment projects, attention to unpaid care work remains little discussed in the literature,

despite its importance to sustainable development. Applying Diane Elson’s feminist economic

framework for alleviating unpaid care work inequality to a case study of gendered CSRin Ghana, I

find that at present unpaidcare work is (a) unrecognised in business’CSR,(b) may be both reduced

or exacerbated by CSR efforts, and (c) remains conceptualised as relevant only to the private

sphere, therefore, missing a unique opportunity for business to contribute to gender equality and

sustainable development. Connecting unpaid care work and business responsibility contributes to

a more expansive understanding of what CSR may be.

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INTRODUCTION

Improving genderequality has in recent years been seen as an opportu-

nity for governments, businesses, and global development, hailed as a

gateway to national growth (Ward, Lee, Baptist, & Jackson, 2010),

community development (Coles & Mitchell, 2011), and improved

returns (Yeager & Goldenberg, 2012). Within development and finance

institutions “Gender economics is smart economics”(The World Bank,

2006) has become accepted doctrine (Pr€

ugl, 2015). Subse quently, the

last few years have seen a rise in “gendered CSR”(Karam & Jamali,

2013), as businesses as diverse as Coca-Cola, Walmart, IKEA,and Mars

race to “empower”women, particularly in the global South. In this

paper, however, I argue that whilst “gendered CSR”may go some way

to aiding the sustainable development goal of gender equality (UN

Global Compact, 2015), it is fundamentally flawed unless it is viewed

first considering the gendered macroeconomic context in which it

operates, and second, in which it recognises, reduces, and redistributes

unpaid care work inequalities.

Unpaid care work refers to childcare, elder care, caring work (e.g.,

for sick relatives), housework, and related activities that are essential

for household survival, but receive no remuneration (Carswell & De

Neve, 2013; The World Bank, 2011). More expansively, unpaid work

can include working in family businesses without pay or benefits,

engaging in subsistence farming, or volunteer work. The focus here,

however, is on unpaid care work that specifically includes those

activities that involve others’needs, such as collecting firewood and

water for the community or family, or taking children to and from

school. Whilst men do perform unpaid care work, and to generalise

risks essentialism, statistics show that worldwide women andgirls per-

form up to 80% of domestic work (The WorldBank, 2011). It is a truly

global phenomenon: from the apartments of Copenhagen to the plan-

tations of Chittagong, care work must take place. When family mem-

bers fall ill, when there is a funeral to arrange, when there is a

celebration to cook for: women most often shoulder these tasks.

Unpaid care work is gendered across all countries, although there are

variations in who,when, and why individuals perform unpaidwork (UN

Women, 2015). In theglobal South, women’s unpaid work can be more

challenging thanfor women in the North, due to persistent inequalities

in access to public services (e.g., water, sanitation, child and elder care,

energy), resources (e.g., money towards transport), and stereotyped

gender norms (e.g., women being forbidden from using public trans-

port; or men being ridiculed for contributing to household chores)

(ActionAid,2013; Boserup, 1970; Coles & Mitchell,2011).

Feminist economists have been at the forefront of theorisation of

the importance of unpaid care work to economies, societies, and indi-

viduals (Beneria, 1999). They have rich insights to apply to the field of

CSR and development (Pearson, 2007). In this article, I incorporate

feminist economictheory into CSR, and empirically apply DianeElson’s

(2009) 3R framework to a case studyof “gend ered CSR”in the Ghana-

ian cocoa value chain. My research question is: “to what extent can

Received:9 November 2016

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Revised: 3 July2017

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Accepted:12 April 2018

DOI: 10.1111/beer.12190

Business Ethics: A Eur Rev. 2018;27:337–349. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/beer  

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