100 years of Care: Design-based explorations of a 100 years of care journeys: 100 YEARS OF CARE—WOMEN’S CARE

Our map represents a care lifecycle focused on women’s health. It maps the beginning of life from fertilisation and the impact of pregnancy on women to early year development, puberty, the menopause (which we argue should be
reclaimed as ‘femopause’) and finally later life. Given that women traditionally adopt the role of caregivers, we’ve mapped the impact this has against the limited support available for women to negotiate their changing role. This becomes particularly evident from 50-60 when women are not only facing
the menopause and its symptoms of anxiety and vasomotor to name a few impacts of comorbidities at a time when they are often jointly responsible for providing childcare and parental care. This is increasingly becoming an issue many women must negotiate as they choose to have children later in life so they can concentrate on education and their careers during their 20s and 30s. While care is traditionally provided by family during the first 65 to 70 years of a person’s life, afterwards the burden on the healthcare system often increases as people become unwell or need more medically supervised care interventions. This comes at an increased cost to the NHS. It can also come at an increased cost for families and include decisions that may remove the liberty of the family member in the process towards a ‘Deprivation of Liberty’ (DOL). It can also involve negotiating a range of care provision, including discussing external agencies which may include social workers, organising a care package, palliative care, and carers. The brain’s development and deterioration is also mapped across the 100 year lifespan. As well as mapping women’s care lifecycle, we have mapped human’s impact on the environment. Each person contributes an average of 10,5000 articles of clothing to landfill and consumes 30,000 gallons of water over their lifetime. It takes 1500 gallons of water to make a pair of jeans and 2700 litres for one t-shirt, which is enough for one person to drink for 900 days. A woman has around 450 periods in her lifetime. This adds up to 10 years or 3,500 days of an average woman’s life that is spent menstruating, with a 45 million period products being produced yearly will have its own environmental impact. During an average person’s lifespan, they will witness 341 weather events costing a total of $2.475 trillion. Over the last 100 years average surface temperature has increased by 1 degree and 11 of the warmest years have occurred since 1980. Sea levels have risen between 4-10 inches and greening in Spring begins 8 days earlier and is lasting longer. Moreover, during the past 100 years we have witnessed Chernobyl, the most expensive disaster in human history at a cost of $700 billion, and Fukushima at a cost of $187 billion. We argue that both the impact of care on an individual and the environmental impact of people should be considered simultaneously if we are to find solutions to both problems.