A/68/293 as tensions between care and unwanted dependency, abuses against persons with disabilities or older persons, and children’s right to receive quality care — are not addressed, and only brief recommendations are made on paid domestic work. The Special Rapporteur hopes that this report will nevertheless encourage broader discussion of the human rights implication of care work. 6. In 1995, the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action highlighted the importance of tackling the unequal distribution of paid and unpaid work between men and women, as an essential step towards achieving gender equality. Unfortunately, very little progress has been made since that time. The neglect of unpaid care in policy persists, at great cost to caregivers themselves. Across the world, millions of women still find that poverty is their reward for a lifetime spent caring, and unpaid care provision by women and girls is still treated as an infinite, cost-free resource that fills the gaps when public services are not available or accessible. This report calls for a fundamental shift in this status quo, as part of States’ fundamental human rights obligations. Without further delay, public policies should position care as a social and collective responsibility and treat unpaid caregivers and those they care for as rights holders. III. Women’s unpaid care work: the human rights framework 7. Across the world, women and girls commit substantially more time than men to unpaid care work. 5 This heavy and unequal responsibility for unpaid care is a barrier to women’s greater involvement in the labour market, affecting productivity, economic growth and poverty reduction. Most importantly, however, the unequal distribution, intensity and lack of recognition of unpaid care work undermines the dignity of women caregivers, obstructs their enjoyment of several human rights on an equal basis with men, undermines progress towards gender equality and entrenches their disproportionate vulnerability to poverty across their lifetime. 8. States’ actions or inactions define who has access to quality care and who bears the costs of its provision. For example, where public services are unavailable, of low quality or not sufficiently adapted to the needs of carers — for example, school hours that do not correspond with parents’ working hours — the unpaid care work of families and communities is intensified. When the State fails to adequately regulate, fund or provide care, the burden shifts to families who have to make their own arrangements. Owing to gender stereotypes related to family and work, such as “male breadwinners”, “women as carers/nurturers”, this generally means that women assume the bulk of the work, to the detriment of their human rights enjoyment. 9. The difficulties, intensity and gendered distribution of unpaid care work create and perpetuate unequal rights enjoyment and gender inequality, and cause human rights violations. States therefore have concrete obligations in this regard. Various international human rights treaties, including the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, the International Covenant on Civil and __________________ 5 4/24 See Debbie Budlender, Time Use Studies and Unpaid Care Work (New York, Routledge, 2010), and Marzia Fontana, “Gender dimensions of rural and agricultural employment”, in Gender Dimensions of Agricultural and Rural Employment: Differentiated Pathways out of Poverty — Status, Trends and Gaps (Rome, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 2010). 13-42271