Professor Ito Peng received news earlier this spring that she has received funding for a second large partnership project. This project, called "Care Economies in Context: Towards Sustainable Social and Economic Development," pulls together research teams from eight different countries and has funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), The William and and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and the Open Society Foundations.
Using a broad definition of "care," this project will map and measure all paid and unpaid elements of the Care Economy in Canada and seven other countries. These countries span four global regions and represent both the Global North and the Global South. They are: Italy, Columbia, Costa Rica, Mongolia, Sri Lanka, Kenya, and Senegal. Once the teams in each country have mapped and measured the individual care economies, they will conduct comparative analyses to understand the institutions, cultures, and social and economic policies that shape differences and similarities across varying contexts. The team will then develop gender-aware macroeconomic models and other tools for policymakers who are seeking to improve models of care giving in their own jurisdictions.
This project is Professor Peng's second large partnership project to receive funding from SSHRC. It follows her previous success with the project, Gender, Migration and the Work of Care, that focused specifically on an international comparison of the role of migrant care workers and immigration policies in shaping the structure of care. Both projects involved large teams of international researchers and partnerships with key NGO and policy partner. For this new project, Peng has partnerships with seventeen organizations including UN Women, UN Research Institute for Social Development, the International Labour Organization, The African Population and Health Research Centre, Canadian Labour Congress, International Development Research Centre of Canada, and Canada's Ministry of Women and Gender Equality. She will lead a team of about thirty academic researchers and the project will provide training opportunities to at least fifty students and junior scholars.
Professor Ito Peng is a Professor of Sociology and Public Policy at the University of Toronto. She is also the Director of the Centre for Global Social Policy at UofT and the Canadian Research Chair in Global Social Policy. More information about the Care Economies in Context project and Professor Peng's other research is available on the CGSP website.