Development finance institutions and the care economy: opportunities for building more resilient and gender-equitable economies

ABSTRACT Development finance institutions (DFIs) play a major role in mobilizing private sector investments in developing countries. While there has recently been an increasing interest among DFIs in gender-lens investing, these efforts have been somewhat blind to the question of women’s unpaid work and have not yet led to a stronger investment focus on the care economy. Adopting what has been defined by other feminist scholars as a transformative approach to care, this article analyses the potential transformative effects of private sector investments in the care economy by DFIs to help build more resilient and gender-equitable economies following the global COVID-19 pandemic. The authors find there is significant potential for DFIs to approach investments with a more strategic gender- and care-lens and contribute to the recognition, reduction, redistribution, reward, and representation of care work, in line with their objective to promote sustainable socioeconomic development in developing countries.