Towards a better future: Strengthening gender-responsive and disability-inclusive transformative care and support

The UN Women report Towards a better future: Strengthening gender-responsive and disability-inclusive transformative care and support argues that the unequal and often invisible disproportionate responsibility of unpaid care and support for persons with disabilities, particularly children with disabilities, combined with the lack of adequate public care and support services, continues to reinforce gender inequality, limit access to education and employment, and undermine the full participation and autonomy of persons with disabilities. The report looks at case studies from around the world to provide a snapshot of good practices and key lessons for strengthening gender-responsive and disability-inclusive care systems.

UN Women is a Care Economies in Context project partner.

Citation

Kabir, A.H., Otieno, M. (2026). Towards a better future: Strengthening gender-responsive and disability-inclusive transformative care and support. https://www.unwomen.org/sites/default/files/2026-04/towards-a-better-future-en.pdf

Executive summary (excerpt)

This policy paper provides key insights into the intersection of gender and disability as it relates to care and support systems. It highlights that advancing comprehensive care and support systems is essential to promoting gender equality and upholding the rights of those providing and those receiving care and support, particularly persons with disabilities. Care and support systems should adopt an intersectional and human rights–based approach and promote shared responsibility across genders and among households, families, communities, the State and the private sector. Recognizing that needs evolve across life stages, care and support systems must incorporate a life-course approach.

Current data systems rarely capture how care and support needs evolve over the life course, both for those providing and those receiving care and support , at the intersection of gender and disability, including when long-term care and support are required. When data methodologies integrate this perspective, care and support policies, programmes and services can reflect and respond to when, how
and why support needs change.

Key principles that underpin the transformation of care systems are: human rights-based, State accountability, universality, transformation and leaving no one behind. Advancing gender equality, disability inclusion and the rights of persons with disabilities – whether they provide or receive care and support – requires challenging and addressing the unequal social organization of care and support
in a way that is consistent with human rights. The 6R Framework (Recognize, Reduce, Redistribute, Reward, Represent and Resource) can contribute
to this end.