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Time to Care in a Polycrisis: Care Leaves and Care Time for All
Who gets time to care, for whom, and at what moments in a life? We are living through care crises inside a wider polycrisis, and yet care leave policies were designed for another era of work and care: tied to standard employment, centered on early parenthood, and limited to care for family members. This talk sets out a bold, yet modest, proposal — care leaves and care time for all for the care of people and social-ecological worlds, as universal social rights across the life course — and offers examples from around the world of where this future is already taking shape.

Andrea Doucet is Distinguished Professor of Sociology at Brock University, Honorary Professor at University College London's Social Research Institute, and former Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Gender, Work and Care (2011–2025). A sociologist of care, unpaid care work, gender, and families — and a feminist methodologist who studies how care is known and measured — she has spent three decades asking how we define, research, and support care. She is the author of the award-winning book Do Men Mother? (2006, 2018) and, most recently, co-author of Care Leaves and Care Time for All (with Peter Moss, 2026) and co-editor of The Routledge International Handbook on the Listening Guide Method (with Carol Gilligan and Natasha Mauthner, 2026). She directs the SSHRC Partnership Reimagining Care/Work Policies and is co-coordinator of the International Network on Leave Policies and Research. In 2025 she received the Vanier Institute of the Family's Mirabelli-Glossop Award for sustained contributions to understanding family life in Canada.