Decent Work and Sustainable Development in the Care Economy: Meaningfulness and Equity in Undervalued Essential Roles

Dear Colleagues,

We are delighted to invite contributions to our upcoming Topic “Decent Work and Sustainable Development in the Care Economy: Meaningfulness and Equity in Undervalued Essential Roles.”

Bolstering the care economy and decent work has been identified as an essential component of social development (ILO, 2025a). This nexus between the care economy and the decent work agenda has been in the limelight in the post-COVID-19 era. On the one hand, according to the ILO (2025b), “the care economy encompasses care work — paid and unpaid, direct and indirect — delivered through the public and private sectors, including MSMEs, non-profit organisations, the social and solidarity economy, and households. It includes care providers and recipients, as well as the employers and institutions offering care services”. On the other, the decent work agenda has been described as “opportunities for women and men to obtain decent and productive work in conditions of freedom, equity, security and human dignity” (ILO, 1999, 3). The agenda is based on four strategic pillars: (a) fundamental rights and protection at work, (b) the creation and provision of employment, (c) social protection, and (d) social dialogue. In the context of the care economy, the ILO's decent work agenda is inherently embedded in the objective of advancing the UN's Sustainable Development Goal 8—Decent Work and Economic Growth (UN Global Goals, 2025). This SI primarily aims to critically examine the decent work deficit – “the absence of sufficient employment opportunities, inadequate social protection, the denial of rights at work and shortcomings in social dialogue” (ILO, 2009, p. 8) across occupations, industries, nations, and all endeavours involving paid and unpaid care economy. It seeks contributions that explore the decent work deficit across all forms of labour and make policy level and practical recommendations on how to close it. The focus is on care economy in all its manifestations, from formal and regulated contexts to informal, voluntary, and unregulated contexts.

The world of work is extensive, and the conditions of decent work extend beyond material benefits to encompass rights, recognition, equalities, well-being, job satisfaction, and dignity at work (Addati, 2021; ; Bailey et al., 2021; Dobbins, 2025; Romero & Pérez, 2016).  Understanding the decent work deficit entails recognising formal and informal work, legal and illegal work, paid and unpaid work, and voluntary and involuntary work. Decent work agenda is a social policy priority for overcoming the decent work deficit and improving workers' conditions, whether in vulnerable employment or unemployment in developing countries (Dhakal & Burgess, 2021; Rantanen et al., 2020). Recurring crises across the globe, such as COVID-19, increasing incidents of natural as well as man-made disasters, wars, and climate change, have highlighted the undervalued and hidden care work that supports communities, mitigates crises, enables post-crisis development, and provides essential services to maintain production, employment, and wellbeing (Anholon et al., 2022; Buyukgoze-Kavas & Autin, 2019; Dhakal et al, 2021; Schulte et al., 2022). For example, there are millions of workers i.e. nearly two thirds of workforce (ILO, 2018) in the informal and unregulated industry, mainly in the Global South. The SI seeks submissions that examine the nature of and determinants of decent work in a care context; examine programs and policies that support decent work; examine processes, conditions, and experiences associated with where work is related to decent work deficits; pay particular attention to essential, but undervalued, forms of caring work, including voluntary work, domestic care, and front-line crisis services. We welcome conceptual, theoretical, empirical, and policy papers. All methodologies are welcome. The level and focus can range from individual narratives and experiences to national, regional and global in scope.

Relationship to the Literature

The special issue brings together the concepts of sustainable development (UN, 2025), decent work (ILO, 2025), care work (Benjamin, 2022), work valuation (Bluestein et al, 2023) and the undervaluation of work (ILO, 2018). There is extensive literature on the care economy that is largely focused on formal working conditions in an advanced economies like Australia (see Dhakal et al, 2020). However, care work is also extensive in the family and household, across the community through voluntary working arrangements, and in the informal sector, especially in the global south. The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the important contribution of frontline workers in a crisis context (Subramoney et al, 2021), including many low-paid and volunteers, who, under conditions of risk, ensured that communities were protected (Chen, et al, 2022). For the special issue, there are conceptual challenges around unpacking the value of care work in all its forms, linking it to decent work standards, and highlighting its contribution to sustainable development (ILO, 2018). Underlying the discussion is the issue of the gender and power dimensions, especially in developing countries (see Vassily et al., 2025) of the recognition and valuation of care work. SI provides the opportunity to conceptualise value in care work, address decent work standards, examine case studies evaluating the quality and value of care work, and identify programs and policies that support care work, especially by promoting standards and recognition.

Prior to Submission

We request that, prior to submitting a manuscript, interested authors initially submit a proposed title and an abstract of 500-1000 words summarizing their intended contribution. Please send it to the guest editors Kehinde.aluko@aib.edu.au or to /Administrative Sciences/ editorial office (admsci@mdpi.com). Abstracts will be reviewed by the guest editors for the purposes of ensuring proper fit within the scope of the special issue. Full manuscripts will undergo double-blind peer-review.

References

Addati, L. (2021). Transforming care work and care jobs for the future of decent work. International Journal of Care and Caring, 5(1), 149-154.

Anholon, R., Rampasso, I. S., Dibbern, T., Serafim, M. P., Filho, W. L., & Quelhas, O. L. (2022). COVID-19 and decent work: A bibliometric analysis. Work, 71(4), 833-841.

Bailey C, Yeoman R, Madden A, Thompson M, & Kerridge G. (2019). A review of the empirical literature on meaningful work: progress and research agenda. Hum. Resour. Dev. Rev. 18:183–113 [

Benjamin, O. (2022). Job quality for service and care. The Oxford handbook of job quality. Cambridge.

Blustein, D. L., Lysova, E. I., & Duffy, R. D. (2023). Understanding decent work and meaningful work. Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior, 10(1), 289-314.

Buyukgoze-Kavas A & Autin KL. 2019. Decent work in Turkey: context, conceptualization, and assessment. J. Vocat. Behav. 112:64–76.

Chen, P. W., Chen, L. K., Huang, H. K., & Loh, C. H. (2022). Productive aging by environmental volunteerism: A systematic review. Archives of Gerontology and Geriatrics, 98, 104563.

Dhakal, S. P., & Burgess, J. (2021). Decent work for sustainable development in post‐crisis Nepal: Social policy challenges and a way forward. Social Policy & Administration, 55(1), 128-142.

Dhakal, S. P., Nankervis, A., Connell, J., & Burgess, J. (2020). Challenges of caring for the aged: Attracting and retaining aged care assistants in Western Australia. Australasian Journal on Ageing, 39(4), e573-e577.

Dhakal, S., Burgess, J., & Connell, J. (2021). COVID-19 crisis, work and employment: Policy and research trends. Labour & Industry, 31(4), 353-365.

Global Goals (2025). Decent work and economic growth. https://globalgoals.org/goals/8-decent-work-and-economic-growth/

International Labour Organisation [ILO] (2018). Women and men in the informal economy: a statistical picture (third edition. Geneva.

International Labour Organisation [ILO] (1999). Decent work. Report of the director-general to the 87th session of the international labour conference. Geneva, Switzerland: ILO.

International Labour Organisation [ILO] (2001). Reducing the decent work deficit: A global challenge. Geneva, Switzerland: ILO.

International Labour Organisation [ILO] (2025a). Care economy. https://www.ilo.org/topics-and-sectors/care-economy

International Labour Organisation [ILO] (2025b). Advancing decent work and the care economy: An essential component of social development. https://www.ilo.org/publications/advancing-decent-work-and-care-economy-essential-component-social

Rantanen, J., Muchiri, F., & Lehtinen, S. (2020). Decent work, ILO’s response to the globalization of working life: Basic concepts and global implementation with special reference to occupational health. International journal of environmental research and public health, 17(10), 3351.

Romero, M., & Pérez, N. (2016). Conceptualizing the foundation of inequalities in care work. American Behavioral Scientist, 60(2), 172-188.

Schulte, P. A., Iavicoli, I., Fontana, L., Leka, S., Dollard, M. F., Salmen-Navarro, A., ... & Fischer, F. M. (2022). Occupational safety and health staging framework for decent work. International journal of environmental research and public health, 19(17), 10842.

Subramony, M., Groth, M., Hu, X. ‘Judy’, & Wu, Y. (2021). Four Decades of Frontline Service Employee Research: An Integrative Bibliometric Review. Journal of Service Research, 24(2), 230-248. https://doi.org/10.1177/1094670521999721 (Original work published 2021)

Vassiley, A., Barratt, T., Dayaram, K., & Burgess, J. (2025). Psychosocial workplace hazards and industrial relations: an introduction. Journal of Industrial Relations, 00221856251326664.

Dr. Subas Dhakal
Dr. Kehinde Aluko
Prof. Dr. John Burgess
Guest Editors

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