There has been a huge increase in the required labour of care in Ukraine. This burden is falling primarily on women, and it continues to be undervalued, writes Agnieszka Fal-Dutra Santos, Elisabeth Prügl and Yuliia Soroka.
The violence of war is rarely, if ever, contained to the frontlines. In Ukraine, its citizens face intersecting realities of violence: the shelling, bombing and destruction of infrastructure; the mental health impact of late-night air raid alerts; the pain and uncertainty of being torn away from one’s family and community; and the economic violence of increasing cost of living and increasingly inaccessible social services.
All are gendered. And surviving all of them is rooted in largely invisible, unpaid and underpaid labour – the labour of care.
In wartime economies, state support for social reproduction often decreases as public finances and budgets are diverted towards the military. The result is an increased burden of social reproductive labour – the labour necessary to sustain life – falling on the shoulders of communities and individuals, predominantly women.
In wartime Ukraine, the damage caused by the war, coupled with austerity reforms that have been ongoing since 2014, led to major shifts in care provision. Schools have been closed throughout the country due to both destruction and to restructuring of budgets. Hospitals and social workers face increased workload and new challenges as they deal with the consequences of the war, while having to deal with restrictions in their pay.
All this has led to an increased reliance on care labour provided in informal and semi-formal ways. Family networks have been mobilised and reshaped, as families have had to decide whether to move to escape violence or stay put (to take care of elderly relatives who can’t travel, for example). Neighbours and volunteers have stepped up to provide each other with food and shelter. Civil society organisations have reorganised their work to respond to the most urgent needs. The surge of solidarity across the country has been inspiring. But it has also come with a surge in mental, physical and emotional burden on those who carry out the invisible, unpaid or underpaid labour necessary to keep individuals, families and communities alive. These are disproportionately women.
“The state has absolved itself of responsibility. It does not care that the entire burden of responsibility for education and childcare has now shifted to women, and has turned into unpaid domestic work. There is no understanding that guardianship and care is very hard work that must be shared.” (Interview conducted with a Ukrainian expert, translated from Ukrainian by Caring to Survive team
There are four spheres of the social reproductive labour that sustains wartime economies: households; family and neighbourhood support networks; volunteer networks and civil society organisations; and the public sector.
Household and domestic labour
The war in Ukraine has led to a sharp spike in unpaid housework and care labour, disproportionately carried out by women.
Because of the closures of schools, mothers are facing an increased burden of responsibility for education and childcare. The burden of childcare has become even more difficult due to the psychological impact of the war on children.
Many adult children must decide whether to move away from the violence or stay to continue to care for their elderly parents. If they do move, they face insecurity and logistical hurdles as they return to areas close to the frontline to visit them.
Neighbour and family networks
The full-scale invasion of Ukraine by Russia in March 2022 unleashed unspeakable terrors, but it also sparked an inspiring surge of solidarity. Neighbours have organised to share food, water and even electricity. Yuliia Soroka wrote an autoethnographic account of surviving the siege of Mariupol. In it, she recalls a common area organised in a basement, where a generator was set up, around which neighbours came together to cook, eat, and provide each other with comfort.
Families fleeing with children often include elderly relatives, and older women in particular, who become the ones to provide childcare in these networks. This is now a common practice in Ukraine, which is fuelled by government policies, including low retirement age and very low pensions, as well as discrimination against older women in the labour market. In this way, the self-organising for the provision of care under conditions of war and austerity has entrenched some of the preexisting gendered labour divisions.
Volunteering and civil society
Volunteering is an important sphere of wartime care. This is particularly true in Ukraine, where the culture of volunteering has been ingrained into the society since the Revolution of Dignity of 2014. Volunteering has taken a variety of forms; from joining the Ukrainian Armed Forces, through supporting the military by providing it with food, supplies and logistical support, to providing humanitarian assistance to those affected and displaced by violence.
While not all these forms of volunteering constitute social reproductive labour, many do. Baking pies, delivering relief packages, welcoming internally displaced persons at railway stations and organising events to provide them with opportunities to feel at home are all part of volunteers’ work.
“Helping people is like helping yourself, preserving your mental health, so that you can continue to show up and support your loved ones.” (Woman from Kharkiv, interviewed in the framework of the Caring to Survive project)
Volunteering can help people ease their own mental burden, stopping them from despairing by contributing to the community. This highlights the public aspect of volunteering as a community-building activity, as much as a humanitarian one. Volunteering in Ukraine has been linked to high levels of political consciousness and to the development of the country’s civil society.
Civil society organizations have also often reframed their activities in order to provide care and humanitarian assistance. This includes going beyond their usual work, for example in policy advocacy, towards also distributing relief packages and supporting internally displaced persons.
Caring through the state
Social workers have functioned as a bulwark for addressing the harms of the war for those least able to do so themselves, including 3.8 million internally displaced people. In Kharkiv, some social workers went back to visiting the elderly and disabled people in their care only a few days after the beginning of the full-scale invasion, despite heavy shelling and bombing. Their work during wartime was reshaped, not only because of the increased physical insecurity, but also because of the added emotional and mental load of addressing the fears and anxieties of those in their care.
Yet, social work remains one of the most underpaid branches of state services in Ukraine. A lack of funding has aggravated depletion within the state-supported care sector. The mounting demands during wartime make it impossible to ensure the care of the elderly and disabled, without over-reliance on the other, informal and self-organised spheres of social reproduction.
The labour of caring for others – through social work, volunteering and taking care of those in one’s family and closest networks – has enabled the survival of the Ukrainian people through the Russian aggression. It has also, however, brought the spectre of depletion and burnout to those who do the bulk of it; women, including elderly women, social workers, volunteers and activists. Yet, their plight is only marginally recognised in the ongoing discussions around (post-)war recovery.
For better recovery, the invisible labour within the households and communities must be recognised. Better accessibility of public services, including childcare and eldercare services, but also mental care and support for the carers themselves, is necessary to ensure that Ukrainians can not only survive, but rebuild and recover. Those providing care must be included in the policy and planning processes, so that their experience and expertise can be built on when designing a recovery process.
This blog is based on the project Caring to Survive, Surviving to Care: Gendered Survival Practices, Social Reproduction and Circuits of Violence in Ukraine.
Photo credit: Chad Nagle used with permission CC BY 2.0.
