Baseline Study on Care Economy in Bosnia and Herzegovina: Overview of the Key Denominators, Policy and Programming Options

This study is focused on the care economy in Bosnia and Herzegovina and provides an overview of the key denominators, policy and programming options that are available. The aim is to build an understanding of the disproportionate distribution of responsibility for care as a source of inequality, focusing on gender, and through this to help initiate positive change that will lead to the more equitable distribution of the provision of care in households and communities and thereby contribute towards women’s empowerment. The goal is to generate evidence for strategies and interventions using the ‘3Rs approach’, which helps to recognise, reduce and redistribute existing unpaid care work within the household, the community (civil society), the market (private sector) and government (by improving the legal and institutional infrastructure). It also rewards and improves the representation of caregivers in decision-making. Moreover, as pointed out in similar studies (Cantillon and Teasdale, 2021), policies focused on communication issues aim to challenge social and cultural norms.