Who cares? Feminised labour and social reproduction in post-socialist Bulgaria -KE funding £130,000

This research project was initially sponsored for two years (2023-2025) by the Economic Opportunities Fund, Alliance for Gender Equality in Europe, and upon successful completion the funding was extended for the next period (2025-2027) to support an advocacy programme, based on the evidence from our report.

The study used a qualitative research and knowledge exchange strategy to explore and render visible the different exploitative and self-exploitative aspects of care work, especially in sectors such as domestic care, social work, health care, elderly care, and nursery/primary school teaching.

Through 50 qualitative interviews with workers in these sectors in five locations across Bulgaria, the study examined the challenges/opportunities faced by care workers with regard to the de-financing of public services, ageing population and outward migration, and relation to institutional care strategies in post-socialist Bulgaria and the European Care Strategy (European Commission 2021).

Beyond researching and visibilising different norms of care work and how it is exacted and performed within families and communities, nationally and transnationally, the project also works with diverse stakeholders (workers, policy-makers, trade unions, NGOs) to increase the public understanding of the role of social reproduction and care sector for economic and social stability in every sector of society, and push for legislative change.

The project's KE activities were featured in Strathclyde's Annual Sustainability Report 2023-2024.

This research is part of a bigger project that builds upon and expands the Bulgarian NGO LevFem’s work on documenting the experiences and struggles in the care work sector (paid and unpaid) in order to expose the conditions that underpin the existence of this undervalued labour, and work with policy actors to improve these conditions.