Gender, Care Work, and Ageing Labour Markets

This chapter explores how gender, care work, and population ageing intersect in contemporary labour markets and welfare systems. It focuses on older women’s dual roles as both caregivers and care recipients, drawing on evidence from developed and developing economies. The chapter shows how unpaid care, low-paid care work, informality, and weak social protection generate cumulative disadvantage across the life course. It integrates life-course, gendered political economy, intersectional, transnational care-chain, and capabilities perspectives to explain how care inequalities are produced, institutionalised, and globalised. Building on Chap. 9, it argues that inclusive design extends beyond physical environments to the social architecture of care and work, requiring institutions and labour-market arrangements that intentionally value and support people across ages and genders. The chapter closes by outlining policy options and innovations for age- and gender-responsive care systems grounded in dignity, decent work, fairness, and shared responsibility.