CASE OF IMPACT
Care Calculator
The platform that values the economic contribution of caregiving tasks
YEAR
2020
WEB SITE
ABOUT THE PROJECT
From Wingu, together with the Economy, Equality and Gender Team of the Ministry of Economy of Argentina, the Secretariat of Public Innovation of the Office of the Chief of Cabinet of Ministers, the Unit of Behavioral Sciences and Public Policies and the International Labor Organization, in 2020 we created the Care Calculator.
It is an open and free platform that allows to measure and value the time spent on housework and unpaid care work, recognizing the economic contribution generated by care work.
In the work process, several tools and methodologies were used, such as Design Thinking, agile frameworks, impact mapping, User Story Mapping, Moscow matrix and Lean Coffee. In turn, we analyze the experience and make navigability improvements using tools such as Hotjar.
Through a simple questionnaire, the platform asks about the time spent daily on each task, such as cleaning, caring for pets, carrying out formalities and shopping, preparing meals, accompanying children or the elderly, among many tasks that are invisible and naturalized with gender biases.
At the end, she compares the individual results with local statistics and highlights how the overload of these tasks impact women’s employability and education, motivating to share the results to open conversations and achieve behavioral changes to close these gender gaps.
women in Argentina devote on average to this work per month. That’s 8 full days a month, 96 full days a year.
are spent by men on average per month on these tasks, half as much as women.
The Care Calculator has achieved more than 100 thousand visits since its launch in 2020.
IMPACT
This platform became an impactful tool to reflect on the integrated care system.
It was also used as pedagogical material in universities and neighborhood workshops to serve as a starting point for collective debate and analysis.
01
The Care Calculator has achieved more than 100 thousand visits and has generated thousands of conversations on social networks and in public and private spaces.
02
In the first six months of 2023 alone, more than 15,000 people were users of this tool.
03
When the data is completed, the results are presented to the user, calculating the total average monthly hours and giving them a monetary value, which allows the economic contribution generated by the care tasks to be recognized.
This tool makes it possible to generate a statistical record and introspective work on all unpaid tasks and the time spent on them.
It also promotes the dissemination of results through social networks and feedback comments. These are some of them:
“It’s impressive to be able to see it this way. It’s always been something I had to do out of obligation, just because. To see it in economic and not romantic terms, it brings a totally different look. Thank you.”
“When I was answering how much time I spent breastfeeding, I realized how much time it takes me to do it….. I love doing it but it’s a lot of hours that I didn’t realize. Acknowledging them is important.”
“It’s awesome to put numbers to the tasks I do uninterruptedly…. Now I understand why I don’t have time for anything else.”
“This helped me to think and make changes from inside the home to the outside, to society, and thus, little by little, to transform ourselves into a more egalitarian society”.
“I love that they are doing this to make our unpaid work more visible. Being a stay-at-home mom and taking care of the kids can be much more exhausting than having a paid job outside the home. And let’s not even talk about the mental toll it takes.”
