What happens when we take women’s unpaid work seriously?

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What happens when a city takes women’s unpaid work seriously?

Bogotá’s radical experiment in caregiving is going global.

by Rachel Cohen Booth

Blanca Liliana Rodríguez and her sons, Zoran Andrey Vargas and Sergio Paolo Vargas Granada. Juanita Escobar for Vox

In Bogotá’s historic downtown, a modest government building sits in the shadow of a gilded statue of Simón Bolívar, the 19th-century liberator who freed much of South America from Spanish rule. Inside, on the fourth floor, a manzana del cuidado, or care block, pulses with a different kind of revolution.

On a bright October morning, a circle of small children sat around a turquoise table, wide-eyed as their teacher read a Halloween story. In another room, a group of mothers and grandmothers bent over glass jars and wicks, learning to turn used containers into candles during a recycling workshop led by an official from the city’s environmental division. In the main hall, a half-dozen women in sneakers and leggings followed an instructor’s aerobics routine, laughing as they stretched and lunged.

Elizabeth Arias reads to a table of kids. Juanita Escobar for Vox

This space is one of 25 neighborhood hubs that have opened across Colombia’s capital since 2020, all part of an ambitious citywide effort to tackle “time poverty” — the lack of time for anything beyond the crushing, invisible burden of unpaid care work that falls overwhelmingly on women.

In Bogotá, a city of 8 million people, nearly 4 million women do some form of unpaid care work, and about 1.2 million dedicate most of their time to it, meaning 10 hours a day or more. Many commute for hours to reach paid care jobs, only to return home and do more unpaid care.

At a care block, a woman can access a variety of services while the person she cares for is looked after by teachers and staff nearby. She can hand off her laundry to an attendant, finish her schooling, meet with a lawyer, consult a psychologist, or learn job skills. The scope of activities is not limited to errands, either: She can also read a novel, catch up with friends, or just get some rest. And the system extends beyond the physical blocks — mobile buses bring comprehensive services to rural areas, and an at-home program targets caregivers who support those with severe disabilities and therefore cannot leave their houses.

Bogotá is trying to do something tricky: elevate both care work and caregivers, while also saying, “You shouldn’t have to be doing this so much — you deserve a full life beyond caring for kids, for aging relatives, for your partner.”

A multiuse building that includes a care block and laundromat for caregivers. Juanita Escobar for Vox

Understanding how Bogotá built its care system — and the challenges it faces — offers a template for other cities. And indeed, what started as a local experiment is now gaining traction internationally. Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone, expects to open its first care block by this year’s end. Guadalajara in Mexico approved funding for several “care communities” earlier this summer, and care blocks are already operating in Mexico City and Santiago, Chile. Activists and public health officials in England are trying to adapt the model, and a funder is even seeking to pilot care blocks in an American city in 2026.

The novel idea is putting caregivers — not just care recipients — at the center of policy, says Ai-jen Poo, a leading voice in the US care work movement and president of the National Domestic Workers Alliance. Poo traveled to Bogotá in 2023 to learn more and said the program “blew her mind.” Before the pandemic, she added, most people didn’t identify as caregivers per se — even if they saw themselves as moms, parents, children.

“What could be the next big breakthrough is cities putting the idea of a caregiver and intergenerational care at the center of how you design access to services,” Poo said. “That’s the future.”