A/68/293 distribution. For example, any financial support to carers should be paid to the primary caregiver regardless of sex, biological relationship to the care receiver or the form of the household or family. Similarly, social assistance programmes must be designed taking into account the intense unpaid care responsibilities of women living in poverty. Thus, collecting payments, or meeting co-responsibilities, such as ensuring a child’s attendance at school, must not significantly increase the already heavy workloads of women, and programmes must not reinforce the maternal/caring roles of women without involving men. 87. States must ensure that social protection systems do not create significant inequalities between those who have an interrupted participation in the labour force — due for example to parenthood, care for older persons or persons with disabilities — and those who do not. At a minimum, States must provide universal non-contributory social pensions that are sufficient for an adequate standard of living, and ensure that women living in poverty can access them. The introduction of carer credits into a country’s pension or superannuation system can provide a method of explicitly recognizing those years spent providing unpaid care. 87 88. All social protection programmes, including employment guarantee programmes, must be participatory, gender-sensitive and accessible to women with care responsibilities. Information regarding social protection programmes and eligibility must reach women living in poverty working in the home, through locally adapted and gender-sensitive communication strategies. 89. In order to move towards women’s equal enjoyment of the right to work, an unpaid care perspective on labour market policies is also crucial. Various measures should be considered to eliminate de facto sex discrimination in employment, for example financing parental leave or maternity benefits publicly, putting in place policies to help people back into work once they have taken time out of the labour force, and incentivizing carer-friendly employment practices and work arrangements, in collaboration with trade unions, industry bodies and employers. Certainly, States must proactively address the persistence of gender-based wage gaps and link job creation to an increase in the supply of care through expanded public services (see below). As the undervaluation of unpaid and paid care work go hand in hand, it is also important to improve working conditions, enjoyment of rights, and pay for care workers and domestic workers. 90. In the light of the many gender, socioeconomic and racial inequalities inherent in the global care chain, States — both countries of origin and destination countries — should pay greater attention to care issues in migration policy, from protecting the rights of migrant domestic workers to supporting the care needs of those they leave behind. 91. States should also take account of unpaid care work in development planning and programming, including in the post-2015 development agenda. Any goals, indicators and targets adopted should reflect an awareness of the intensity and distribution of unpaid care work and its impact on women’s human rights and opportunities for human development. To this end, equality in access to public services should constitute a central goal. __________________ 87 13-42271 Australian Human Rights Commission, Investing in Care. 21/24