IKD one-day webinar: Health and care at the crossroads

Established in 2004, Innovation, Knowledge and Development (IKD) is a vibrant interfaculty research group that brings together academics from across The Open University to pool expertise and undertake joint research on various theoretical, policy and applied themes on international development and innovation.

Academics from the School of Social Sciences and Global Studies, part of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, will present and discuss their recent research pertaining to evidencing gender inequalities in social policy and campaigning for gender equality.

Register via Eventbrite

Programme

Simulating the gender impacts of investing in transformative care policy packages across 82 economies (Dr Jerome de Henau)

This research is carried out on behalf of the International Labour Organization and aims to devise an open-source simulation tool to analyse the costs and benefits in terms of employment and gender equality of investing in various care policy packages such as parental leave, childcare services and long-term care services. The tool calculates the annual investment requirements to provide universal high-quality care services and well-paid childcare-related leave entitlements and the gendered employment effects in terms of employment creation in care and the wider economy and changes to maternal employment patterns. It also simulates potential return on investment that can be used as economic argument to foster political enthusiasm in investing public money in the care sector. A short overview of the tool and a few results and potential applications will be presented, of use to researchers, campaigners and policy makers alike. Data and calculations for 82 economies from all income levels and continents are available.

Bio: Dr Jerome De Henau is a Senior Lecturer in Economics at The Open University. His research interests are in gender analysis of fiscal and social policy. He has recently led projects on the employment and fiscal effects of investing in formal care provision, in various OECD and emerging economies (funded by ITUC and UN Women) and is currently leading on a project with the ILO to simulate the costs and benefits of investing in transformative care policy packages across 82 countries. He was previously involved in two ESRC-funded research projects analysing gender inequalities within households. He is also a member of the policy advisory group of the UK Women's Budget Group, an independent think tank scrutinising the UK government’s economic policies for their gender impacts.

Migrant health care workers during Covid-19: risks, impacts, responses (Professor Nicola Yeates)

This presentation presents key findings from a UKRI-funded research project that shone a spotlight on how migrant health care workers – more than two-thirds of whom are women - fared during the Covid-19 pandemic. It discusses the impacts of the pandemic on them and collective responses to the pandemic’s impacts with particular reference to migrant health workforces around the world.

Bio: Professor Nicola Yeates is Chair of Social Policy at The Open University. Her research focuses on social policy and health, care and welfare formations at different levels and scales of globality. She is currently leading on a project with the ILO looking at the governance aspects of global funds and their implications for a prospective Global Fund for Social Protection.

Implementing health policy in Nigeria: The Basic Health Care Provision Fund as catalyst for achieving Universal Health Coverage in Nigeria (Julia Chukwuma)

This presentation discusses controversies surrounding Nigeria’s on-going healthcare sector reform process, placing it into the broader context of social policy development and implementation in the African context. It engages with the diversity of factors and interests that contribute to creating a social policy environment that allows for poor health outcomes and significant health inequities in Nigeria to materialise.

Bio: Julia Chukwuma is a Lecturer in Economics at The Open University. Her research seeks to generate new insights into how social policy takes form in an African context, with a particular focus on the political economy of Universal Health Coverage reform processes.

Two decades of Tanzanian health policy. Examining policy developments and opportunities through a gender lens (Dr Roosa Lambin and Milla Nyyssölä)

Tanzania has undertaken important health sector reforms over the past two decades, while the country continues to grapple with important gender-biased health challenges disadvantaging women. This paper examines the evolution of Tanzania’s health policy from the perspective of enhancing financial protection for working-age women. Additionally, the paper explores policy options for gender-responsive health insurance expansion in the context of Tanzania.

Bio: Dr Roosa Lambin is a Visiting Research Fellow in Social Policy at The Open University. Her work is focused on global social policy, social policy developments in sub-Saharan Africa, and philanthropic organisations as emergent social policy actors. Dr. Milla Nyyssölä is a Chief Researcher at the Labour Institute for Economic Research (Labore) in Helsinki, Finland. Her work focuses on poverty, vulnerability, sustainable development, gender, labour, and behavioural economics. Before joining Labore, she was the research focal point in UNU-WIDER’s country programme on Tanzania “Sustainable development solutions for Tanzania – strengthening research to achieve SDGs”.