Abstract

Unpaid care work. These three words usually make us think about people, most often women, caring for their families and doing housework. And this should not surprise because historically research around unpaid care work has been focusing mostly on gender inequality, on women’s double burden — at work and at home.
This, however, does not cover all unpaid care work humans do. Many engage voluntarily in unpaid care activities to support non-family members like friends, neighbors, strangers, or entire communities. Such care work contributes to individual and collective wellbeing. But it may also create more burden too. Therefore, to fully understand the diverse ways in which the need for care services is satisfied and by whom, comprehensive measurements of volunteer care work must be conducted.
To support such efforts, the ILO developed guidance and tools for countries. The Ukrainian State Statistics Service applied them to collect data through a dedicated Labour Force Survey module and produced estimates. Results show that on average, during any four weeks, from January to June 2021, almost 2.3 million Ukrainians aged 15 years and over had been dedicating almost 16 million hours to volunteer work. The number of volunteers was similar to the total number of people employed in Education and Human health and social work activities sectors. These estimates were obtained while strict COVID-19 containment rules were still in force, which probably prevented many from volunteering.
We show how the ILO measurement guidance was tested and implemented in Ukraine — from defining volunteer care work to producing estimates — describing the key survey processes, challenges and adopted solutions.