Informing and supporting action to improve health and tackle inequality

Dr Angela O’Hagan

Reader in Equalities and Public Policy, Glasgow Caledonian University

Providing and receiving care and support forms part of all our lives in different ways over the lifespan. Taking a feminist economics perspective, Angela will present the findings and recommendations of the Commission on a Gender Equal Economy. Angela will discuss the gendered dimensions of the care economy, considering how care is valued and remunerated in the realities of our economic and social infrastructure.

The Commission’s call to action is for a ‘Caring Economy Now’. In this model, the provision of care and support is fundamental to our economic, social, and cultural lives, and the provision of care is valued and rewarded accordingly. Angela will argue that investment in care and support has to be central to investment in economic development, as our reliance on social infrastructure is as important as physical infrastructure. The Commission’s findings show that such investment brings significantly greater economic returns than investment elsewhere in the economy.

Putting care at the core of our economic model is part of the healing from Covid-19. The pandemic has exposed the fragmented and under-resourced care infrastructure along with the extant of underlying inequalities particularly experienced by women, disabled people, and people of colour. Angela will outline how a caring economy delivers on equality, sustainability, and wellbeing, and offers a coherent approach to public investment and the allocation of public finance.

Angela is a Reader in Equalities and Public Policy at Glasgow Caledonian University where she is also Deputy Director of the WISE Centre for Economic Justice. Prior to joining GCU to do a PhD in gender budgeting, Angela was with Oxfam Scotland and previously Director of Carers Scotland. She is currently the independent Chair of the Scottish Government’s Equality and Budget Advisory Group and has been closely involved in the Scottish and UK Women’s Budget Groups and the European Gender Budgeting Network for many years. In 2019, Angela was awarded the Political Studies Association Jo Cox Award for Public Service and Active Citizenship.

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