Care and education jobs: drivers of sustainable growth?
We cannot fight climate change without taking care of places and everything in nature and of each other – which includes making sure that current and future generations are well prepared to withstand and mitigate climate crises (Novello, A., and Carlock, G., 2019). Those jobs that meet the physical, mental, intellectual, and emotional needs of everyone – adults and children, old and young, fragile and able-bodied – are foundational to our societies (ILO, 2018). Most jobs in the education and health sectors also have minor – if any – emission impact (A Feminist New Green Deal, 2021). This means that, for any sustainability agenda to succeed, investments in and the value given to caring and educating must be scaled up (Novello, A., and Carlock, G., 2019).
Climate change has heightened the intensity of care work and is likely to continue to do so (MacGregor, S., et al., 2022). More care work will be needed, often with less, due to more injuries and more infectious disease spreading, but also due to a strain on providers’ operations, such as damaged facilities and disrupted supply chains (Hariharan, K., et al., 2022). Looking ahead, we can see that educating current and future generations to take charge of the green transition will also be key to lasting success (Novello, A., and Carlock, G., 2019). This will make these education and care jobs more demanding, and the unequal distribution of who does this work is likely to be exacerbated (MacGregor, S., et al., 2022). In the Nordic Region, an average of 80.1 per cent of those working in healthcare in the last quarter of 2020 were women (Eurostat, 2022). From early childhood education to the upper secondary level, women in the Nordic countries are also the majority of teachers – 93.8 per cent of early childhood or pre-school teachers are women, and women make up 56.36 per cent of upper-secondary teachers (Eurostat, 2023). Yet, trends show that ‘green talent’ and green skills are on the rise outside of traditional green jobs in these sectors, particularly in healthcare (Kimbrough, K., 2021). Studies also show growing motivation in the healthcare profession to minimise the sector’s environmental impact (Stanford, V., et al., 2023).
Whereas green jobs programmes could incentivise shifting out of (much-needed) care and education jobs into higher-carbon-intensity and production-oriented fields (Novello, A., and Carlock, G., 2019), the care and education sectors could offer sustainable job opportunities for men transitioning out of polluting ‘brown’ jobs, no matter where they live. Health and education workers are also key to ensuring that more women have opportunities to enter and climb the ladder in clean energy or other traditional green jobs should they wish (A Feminist New Green Deal, 2021). For this to become a reality, however, mindsets that associate ‘caring’ with the feminine have to be changed through an integrated approach that also improves working conditions in the care sector.
Everyone is needed in the green shift, whether or not they are in what today are considered green jobs, and many argue that it is necessary to expand our idea of what a green job actually is to include a number of sectors that are crucial to a sustainable economy (see, for instance, Valero, A., et al., 2021). Analysing a particular subset of industries or tasks limits the definition of green jobs as this does not include those already low-carbon jobs that will play a central role in countries’ and societies’ journey towards net-zero (Valero, A., et al., 2021). Research from Iceland (Hallgrimsdottir, B., 2022) argues that, as green jobs are a newer concept, the government has more freedom to place its focus on industries and occupations that have so far been left out of the green shift, such as care work. Care work is the backbone of our society, and this type of work is indispensable, while also being low in carbon and greenhouse gas emissions. Hallgrimsdottir advocates for further developing and improving the working conditions of these jobs in connection with the green economy, as more and more people need care, while daycare is a necessary in order for many people to be economically productive (Hallgrimsdottir, B. 2022). This trend is also seen elsewhere. More organisations are promoting the inclusion of educators and carers as green workers (see, for instance, Novello, A., and Carlock, G., 2019, and A Feminist New Green Deal, 2021), given the value and importance of green jobs, often shown through higher wages. Certain countries, such as the United Kingdom, include education, human health, and social work in their green jobs and green sector classifications to gauge how to make all occupations greener (LeBlanc, L., and McIvor, C., 2020).
For a regenerative economy to thrive, care and education jobs in all forms must be valued and respected, which will require breaking down the stigma of who does paid and unpaid work (A Feminist New Green Deal, 2021). Having more men enter these fields will help diminish both horizontal and vertical occupational gender segregation over time (European Union, 2022) and can help to reduce the gender pay gap, as more men would enter care work if they were valued with higher wages. For this to happen, gender norms that place women in care and education sectors and men in fossil-fuel sectors, for instance, must be deconstructed, while investments in the care economy must be boosted.