In her book “Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice”, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha highlights the dichotomy of care work. Whilst it’s absolutely necessary for keeping the world running, unpaid caregiving is taken for granted, and most care workers are expected to have limitless capacity to give.

Her care work theory is the inspiration for the Fair Care Tracker, a free tool that facilitates caregivers to (a) record the unpaid work they perform, (b) assess the value they get in return, (c) reflect on the skills they develop, and (d) quantify the uncollected revenue. 

How does it work? Once you sign up with your email and a password of your choice, you will be able to record your caregiver hours and label them based on the benefit for you. You can also estimate how much money you’d earn should you be paid per hour.

Examples:

• You are designated cook for your family. How many hours? Are you thanked for your work? Or is your work perceived as a given?
• The department you work for as an engineer assumes that because of certain characteristics – being the woman, the youngest, the mum… – you’re the go-to person to arrange the catering and birthday parties. How does this task align with your career goals?

Sneak peek below

Fair Care Tracker user interface screenshot by Patricia Gestoso ©.

Want to give it a try? Sign up with your your email and a password of your choice below and start recording. You can delete your account anytime.

Give it a go for 15 days and let me know how it goes! For example, I’d love to hear about

• What’s the value to you of formally recording the amount and benefit of unpaid work
• What skills are missing in the dropdown menu
• What the tool is missing to make it work for you

What hourly rate should you use?

You can use a flat rate (e.g. minimum wage). In our report “Life under lockdown: Impact of COVID-19 on professional women’s unpaid work“, we used three different rates for household chores, schooling/nursing, and caregiving.

• Household chores  hourly rate of £8.20 based on the UK national minimum wage assuming an employee over 25 years of age from April. 
• Schooling/nursing hourly rate of £11.34 based on the daily pay for a teacher in the “unqualified 1” range for England and Wales excluding London area.
• Caregiving hourly rate of £17.20 based on the report “Valuing Carers 2015 The rising value of carers’ support” by carersuk.org.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, bubble.io has kindly waived the total cost of a professional subscription for the hosting of this application.

NOTE: The tool is designed for a desktop experience.