The ILO Global Care Policy Portal is a knowledge hub on legal and statistical indicators related to national care leave policies and services, created to advance the ILO’s transformative agenda for caregiving. gender equality and non-discrimination.
It allows users to analyze and compare national care leave policies and services in more than 180 countries. The Portal contains information on eleven topics, including: maternity, paternity and parental leave, health protection for pregnant and lactating women, breastfeeding at work, child care and long-term care services. It uses international labor standards as a reference: the Maternity Protection Convention, 2000 (No. 183), the Workers with Family Responsibilities Convention, 1981 (No. 156) and Recommendations no. 165 and 191 accompanying it.
To help calculate the investment requirements, employment benefits and gender equality impact of different care policies, the ILO has also developed the Care Policies Investment Simulator.
The Simulator is the largest online care policy modeling tool available. The Simulator, which contains data from more than 80 countries and is based on more than 180 statistical indicators, can help create tailor-made investment packages related to four care policies: paid leave related to child care (maternity, paternity and parental leave), breastfeeding interruptions, early childhood care and education services, and long-term care services. The simulator then calculates the results automatically, allowing the user to better understand the investment requirements of the care policy package, the impact on job creation, the reduction of wage and employment gaps between men and women, and the return on investment.
Both the Global Care Policy Portal and the Investment Simulator are free to use, conform to international labor standards, and are based on decades of ILO and global policy research.
According to the ILO report Care at work, two billion potential parents still live in countries that lack adequate maternity protection, paternity and parental leave, and quality childcare services with decent jobs. Closing these gaps in child care policies could create millions of jobs by 2035 and promote employment and income for women.