20
May
2026
Watch
Advancing towards a care society: addressing the gender care gap (debate)
Mr President, individualism is destroying our social ties in Europe. Yet there is a whole category of the population that works in the shadows to make those around them better off. It is these nearly 100 million caregivers, who are obviously, most often, caregivers. While this population of caregivers is a real lever to fight against the excesses of individualism and suffers from a lack of consideration, the only answer to the text proposed here is to ask for gender-sensitive budgeting and to call for more legal immigration of women, on the pretext that women occupy the vast majority of home care tasks and that, among them, many are foreigners. There were many other priorities to highlight. Even though the text acknowledges, I quote, "the importance and social value of contributions to intergenerational care", no measures are envisaged to promote demography and to meet the high demand. Ensuring a caring society is a necessity, an obvious one. That it is necessary to welcome more foreigners and to provide gendered budgets, is clearly to miss completely this urgent subject.