Consultation Responses and Parliamentary Briefings

Response to Scottish Government's Consultation on a National Care Service for Scotland

Nov 10, 2021: The provision of care, both paid and unpaid, is closely interlinked with systemic and harmful gender roles that constrain women’s lives. Yet this consultation document on proposals for a new National Care Service, which runs to 137 pages, is entirely gender blind. Women are the majority of social care service users, the majority of unpaid carers, and the vast majority of the social care workforce in Scotland. Women’s access to paid work, leisure time and power remains heavily constrained by the provision of care and gendered expectations around its value and delivery. Social care is vital infrastructure that supports people in Scotland to enjoy their right to participate fully in all branches of society and can prevent isolation, poor health and wellbeing, and poverty – all of which are gendered issues. Care itself is undervalued culturally and financially precisely because it is associated with women. In turn, this cultural undervaluation and the lack of investment attached to social care support perpetuates limited understanding of the role that it plays in the social and economic wellbeing of society.

Date of publication: November 2021