Report type

1. Toolkit
2. Report

Brief background

Care work, both paid and unpaid, forms the invisible backbone of South African society, yet it remains undervalued, unrecognised, and disproportionately carried by women, particularly Black women. While academic and policy discussions about the care economy have expanded in recent years, there remains a significant disconnect between how care is understood in research and policy circles and how it is experienced, named, negotiated, and valued in the everyday lives of ordinary South Africans.

Garnering public attitudes on the care economy and the different actors involved in care provision is crucial to addressing South Africa’s interconnected crises of inequality, poverty, and unemployment, particularly given their deeply gendered, racialised, and classed dimensions. Care encompasses both paid and unpaid work, direct and indirect forms of labour, and care delivered through households, communities, markets, and the state. It includes the activities, relationships, and responsibilities carried out by care providers and recipients across all stages of life. Both paid and unpaid care work are essential for sustaining life, enabling human development, maintaining social cohesion, and supporting economic productivity.

However, traditional approaches to care research often impose academic or policy frameworks onto lived realities, rather than beginning from the language, meanings, and experiences of those performing this labour. In doing so, they can overlook the ways care is embedded within broader systems of social reproduction, household survival, and economic adaptation. This is particularly important in the South African context, where households frequently absorb the shocks of unemployment, austerity, inadequate public services, and broader macroeconomic instability through unpaid and underpaid care labour. Decisions made at the macroeconomic level, including fiscal policy, labour market restructuring, and public service provision, directly shape household care dynamics, while household coping mechanisms and care arrangements simultaneously sustain the broader economy. Understanding these micro-macro linkages is therefore critical to developing responsive and grounded care policy.

This research takes a fundamentally different approach by starting with how LSM 1 to 8 households, care workers, and community members themselves understand and experience what researchers and policymakers refer to as “care work.” The project seeks to understand whether “care” itself is a meaningful or useful term in everyday life, how different communities conceptualise responsibility and support, and how these experiences are shaped by gender, race, class, age, disability, and geography.

The research recognises that care encompasses a wide spectrum of activities: from childcare, elder care, and domestic work to emotional support, household management, community care, and care for people living with illness or disabilities. Yet there are other forms of care that are not always recognised as “care” or even as “work” by those who perform them. In some contexts, care may instead be understood through ideas of obligation, survival, reciprocity, motherhood, kinship, sacrifice, or social responsibility. Understanding these different meanings and framings is essential for developing more effective communication, advocacy, and policy approaches on the care economy.

This public attitudes research will employ a feminist participatory methodology that combines qualitative and quantitative approaches in ways that challenge orthodox economic thinking that narrowly prioritises markets, growth, and accumulation while obscuring the labour required to sustain life and society. The methodology has been chosen to encompass the full economy, including paid and unpaid care work, and to foreground the voices and experiences of those who provide care.

The research will adopt an intersectional lens that highlights how care burdens and economic decisions are experienced differently across gender, race, class, age, and disability. It will illuminate household care responsibilities and dynamics, explore how care responsibilities shift in response to economic and social pressures, and examine how existing care infrastructure either supports or fails households and communities.

In addition to generating evidence, the project aims to contribute toward broader processes of public education and consciousness-building around care. By creating spaces for reflection and dialogue, the research may also support participants in recognising unpaid and underpaid care labour as work that sustains households, communities, and the economy more broadly.

Ultimately, the findings will contribute toward shaping more grounded and accessible communication strategies on care, while also informing future advocacy and policy processes, including discussions related to a National Care Strategic Plan and broader efforts to recognise, reduce, and redistribute unpaid and underpaid care work in South Africa.

Purpose of the activity/output

The consultant will develop two documents:

1. A narrative-style research report that informs policy and advocacy on Care

The research should generate evidence that can support future advocacy and policy development related to the care economy in South Africa.

This includes:

• Informing discussions on a National Care Strategic Plan;
• Identifying inequalities and unmet care needs;
• Understanding how households absorb economic and social shocks through care labour;
• Exploring the relationship between care, employment, social protection and public services;
• Supporting future feminist economic policy interventions;
• Strengthening advocacy efforts by labour movements, civil society organisations and policy actors.
• The research should contribute toward bridging the gap between grassroots experiences and policy processes.

2. A practical advocacy and communications toolkit that informs communication and narrative strategies on care

The toolkit should translate the research findings into accessible messaging, narrative framing tools and public education materials that assist civil society, labour movements, and policymakers to communicate care in ways that are grounded in lived experience and resonate across different communities and social groups in South Africa.

This includes:

• Identifying how people speak about and describe care in their everyday lives;
• Exploring whether existing policy and academic language resonate with lived experience;
• Understanding the emotional, cultural, political, and economic meanings attached to care;
• Identify barriers to public understanding and recognition of care work;
• Exploring how care can be communicated in accessible, politically meaningful, and socially resonant ways;
• Generate insights that can shape public education and mobilisation strategies on the care economy.

 Outputs/Activities

Working with IEJ team members, the consultant should expect to:

• Co-conceptualise the objectives of the report and toolkit before the attitudes testing process begins.
• Identify Priority Demographic Groups and recruit participants with 8 to 10 participants per group.
• Refine messaging for use in focus groups and interviews
• Finalise questions for the survey
• Report for government audience
• Co-develop the finalised (i.e., ready for design, edit, and layout) toolkit for civil society and labour movements.

Administrative commitments: 

• Inception meeting (1-2 hours, consultant to prepare 1-page proposal)
• Facilitating focus groups (Recording them for data)
• Interviews (Recording them for data)
• Survey (Identifying participants and consolidating data)
• Fortnightly check-in meetings from inception until completion of toolkit (1 hour, consultant to prepare update/feedback on progress)
• Participation in the online launch of the report and toolkit at the end of the consultancy period.

 Method

The consultant is expected to propose a feminist, participatory and qualitative methodological approach. This may include:

• Focus groups;
• Semi-structured interviews;
• Participatory facilitation methods;
• Desktop research;
• Narrative inquiry;
• Qualitative thematic analysis.

The methodology should prioritise accessibility, participation, and ethical engagement with participants.

Connection with the project

This report and toolkit will contribute to the Care Economies Project’s outcomes and the team’s intention to promote policy implementation and transformation that influences how care is recognised, supported, and resourced. The team, through this research, aims to embed care as an essential social and economic infrastructure through policy reform and feminist economics evidence-based research.

Translation

None needed

Budget

Negotiable

Production Schedule

Duration: July – December 2026

Estimated consultancy period: 30 working days over 6 months

Request for Proposal

Prepare a 2000-word proposal that includes the conceptual approach, methodological approach, and also explains why you can undertake this task. The proposal must include:

• Outline the capacity and expertise you bring to this work. This should include a portfolio of previously published work on the care economy, including reports produced for policy audiences. Applicants should also demonstrate experience in developing accessible advocacy and communication materials on care issues for civil society organisations and labour movements.
• Budget/ Financial proposal for 30 days of work
• Curriculum Vitae related to this particular work

Deadline for proposal:  1 June 2026

Evaluation of Proposal

• Experience and expertise in the care economy, care policies, developing practical recommendations, and capacity building interventions.
• Creative writing in accessible language skills
• Budget costs

Please send proposals to morongwa.kekana@iej.org.za