ABSTRACT
Ailsa McKay was an ontological and epistemic influence of significance both in and beyond her specialist fields of gender budgeting, childcare provision and welfare reform and the Citizens Basic Income (CBI). Ailsa saw the CBI as a gender justice and human rights issue, which would enhance freedoms to do and be, and help sustain the social and cultural capital of unpaid work. Gender is the social and cultural construction of what it means to be man or woman or boy or girl including roles, expectations and behaviors, and the relationships between genders. These constructions are learned through socialization processes. While the coinage and use of care economy is found in feminist economics, demographic projections in the lifetime showed that the care economy was a growing sector that would involve the households, communities, the private and public sectors. The countries with the largest subsistence economies frequently need development assistance to carry out national statistical surveys.
