How can women’s economic empowerment (WEE) policy and programming both generate paid work that empowers women and provide more support for their unpaid care work responsibilities?
Time to Care
With our project now concluded, we will be sharing our findings in multiple formats including:
- A synthesis report which shares our innovative research methodology, findings and policy recommendations
- An animation showing how we can change and improve the balance paid work and unpaid care for women
- A series of audio-photo videos painting a stark picture of the impact on poor women of the double burden of unpaid care work and (poorly) paid work
- Over 100 case studies detailing the lives and struggles of many of the women who took part in the research
Background
The 27-month ‘Balancing unpaid care work and paid work: successes, challenges and lessons for women’s economic empowerment programmes and policies’ project aimed to create knowledge about how women’s economic empowerment (WEE) policy and programming can generate paid work that both empowers women and provides more support for their unpaid care work responsibilities.
Research took place in four countries across two regions:
- India and Nepal in South Asia
- Rwanda and Tanzania in sub-Saharan Africa
The research addressed the following questions
- How do women and families in low-income households balance unpaid care work with income-earning activities?
- How, and to what extent, do women’s economic empowerment programmes and policies consider unpaid care tasks?
- How can these programmes and policies enable women’s participation in paid work, and sustain their incomes, while ensuring good quality childcare for low-income families?
Previous research has focused on the time women spend on care work and other unpaid contributions to the economy.
This project seeks to fill research gaps by focusing on the social and economic implications of how care is organised. It examined how women’s empowerment policies and programmes affect the organisation of care.
The aim is to inform policies that consider care arrangements while also increasing women’s participation in the labour force.
Find out more about this project and see the research results and engagement actvities on the Interactions for Gender Justice website.
Who implemented and funded the project?
This project was part of the Growth and Equal Opportunities for Women (GrOW) programme, and was implemented by the Institute of Development Studies (IDS), the Institute of Social Studies Trust (ISST) in India and BRAC’s East Africa Research and Evaluation Unit (REU) in Uganda, along with ActionAid International (AAI) and Oxfam GB.
Key contacts
