For International Women’s Day 2025, we want to put the spotlight on all the women who take care of their family members with intellectual disabilities.
Mothers, sisters, aunts, daughters and grandmothers often take on the role of caregiver for their family members with intellectual disabilities. The work they do often remains invisible, unpaid, and unrecognised.
The effects of taking on such care responsibilities can impact women negatively. Around 7.7 million women are not working because of care responsibilities, leaving them at a higher risk of poverty, decreased pension and social exclusion.
One of the reasons why female family members take on so much care work is the lack of accessible, affordable and good quality care services across Europe. Sometimes, formal care services are simply not available at all. This affects not only the people with (intellectual) disabilities themselves, but their families too. Informal care provided by parents still makes up the brunt of care and support work people with disabilities receive today.
While this applies to both male and female family members, research by the European Institute for Gender Equality showed that 62% of people providing informal long-term care in the EU are women.
In the European Care Strategy, the European Commission urged Member States to establish national action plans to make care in the EU more available, accessible and of better quality for all. This is important so that women can go back to being family members to their loved ones instead of care providers.
As former Commissioner for Equality, Helena Dalli said:: ‘investing in care is an investment in gender equality and social fairness. (…) Investing in care is about ensuring equal choice, dignity, and self-determination’.
We agree!
Inclusion Europe recognises the work women put in to care and support their loved ones, where formal care services fail them. Investing in quality of care and the accessibility of services is key, so that mothers, sisters, grandmothers, daughters and aunts across Europe can be family members, and just that, to their loved ones again!