Somewhere, I don’t remember when, I stumbled upon the following statement:

“Care work: 61% of women and 39% of men perform care work. A total of 9.02 billion hours are worked each year. That corresponds to a value of 408 billion Swiss francs! Only 7.9 billion hours are spent on paid work.”

While researching this statement, I came across a publication from the Federal Department of Home Affairs / Federal Office for Gender Equality from 2010. The publication is called “Care Work.”

The brochure primarily states what many already know:

Page 7: "A total of around 2.8 billion working hours are spent on caring for children and adults. Four fifths of this is unpaid care work for children and adults in need of care in families, specifically 2.3 billion working hours. Of this, 2.1 billion hours (over 90% of the total) are spent on childcare."

Page 9 addresses the imbalance between men and women: women spend 10.7 hours caring for adults (20.5 hours for children). Men cover the same amount of time for 7.6 hours (13 hours for children).

Senior citizens do a lot of care work: they look after grandchildren, are active in helping their neighbors, are involved in churches and communities or senior citizen organizations. Many people aged 65+ look after their sick spouses.

If you are already a senior citizen, the question of whether care work can be combined with your job is irrelevant. However, the physical and psychological strain of caring for sick relatives should not be underestimated. Options for relief are needed.

If the carers are still of working age, the employer's understanding is required. If the carer has to give up their job, this results in economic costs: the loss of tax revenue and social security contributions, for example. In the longer term, costs arise in social assistance or supplementary benefits.

People who do care work are more likely to be unemployed. Part-time jobs are hard to come by, especially if you are older. And unfortunately, skills acquired outside of work are not on employers' wish lists - how short-sighted! It is no coincidence that the seniors@work website is called "Job platform for retired talent"! After all, only older people have know-how, talent and immense experience.

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