By: Suntaree Saeng-ging, Executive Director of HomeNet Southeast Asia
The focus areas of advocacy for HNSEA over these two to three years are maternity protection and care work. On care work, we call for the recognition of care work as work. Home-based workers are unpaid care workers who support their family members, enabling them to fully participate in economic activity. This contribution to the country’s economy must be recognized. We also call on all governments in ASEAN to begin providing maternity protection and to expand maternity benefits in their social security schemes. Cash benefits for women home-based workers who have given birth, as well as child care centers, must be provided.
In line with this agenda, HNSEA and our allies organized three activities between September and November 2025.
- Regional webinar: “Maternity Protection and the Care Economy in ASEAN: Policy and Implementation Gaps, Realities, and Social Movement Strategies”, held on 26 September 2025, with about 150 participants. The speakers included representatives from regional bodies and government agencies: ESCAP, the Ministry of Civil Political Economy, Social and Cultural Affairs of Indonesia, the Laos Women’s Union, and a member of the Social Security Scheme Board of Thailand.
In this webinar, the HNSEA Executive Director and the Social Security Scheme Board member from Thailand presented on the upcoming maternity benefit in the voluntary social security scheme, which will provide three months of cash for women home-based workers who have given birth.
- Social dialogue between ASEAN and CSOs: Universal Maternity Protection and a Transformative Care Economy, 24 October 2025, Kuala Lumpur. In this dialogue, participants discussed the ASEAN Vision 2045 and agreed that care is not a commodity but a shared social responsibility. Stronger regional collaboration and learning are needed to build systems that truly serve people. ASEAN representatives who joined included a member of AICHER, the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights, a member of ACWC, the ASEAN Commission on the Protection of the Rights of Women and Children, and ESCAP.
Before attending this dialogue, HNSEA and our allies in AROSP produced a joint statement, which you may download here.
- At the APSF Asia Pacific Social Forum, held 1 to 5 November 2025 at Thammasat University in Bangkok, Thailand, under the thematic area of Financial and Economic Justice, HNSEA and our allies organized two events:
- a hybrid assembly titled Social Justice for Working People in Asia and the Pacific, and
- a hybrid workshop titled Towards Universal Social Protection and a Transformative Care Economy in Asia and the Pacific.
