Scaling childcare to promote women’s economic empowerment and child development in Ethiopia

 

As is the case in many countries, women shoulder a heavy and unequal responsibility for unpaid care work in Ethiopia, dedicating over three times as many hours as men to these responsibilities. This extensive care work often limits their ability to engage in higher paying employment opportunities. The situation is exacerbated when they have children to care for, as limited access to childcare services forces older girls to assume unpaid caregiving roles, potentially hindering their education and academic performance and perpetuating a cycle of gender inequality.

This project seeks to inform the scaling of the current public childcare program in Ethiopia to ensure access to quality childcare services that respond to the needs of low-income mothers, and to promote women’s economic empowerment. More specifically, the project will guide the development of procedures and guidelines to support standardized service provision related to early child development, including safety and inclusion training for care workers; promote decent pay for care workers; amplify representation of childcare workers as well as low-income women in policy dialogues; and facilitate coordination among stakeholders implementing the scale-up.

This project is supported under the Scaling Care Innovations in Africa partnership co-funded by Global Affairs Canada and IDRC. Scaling Care Innovations is a five-year partnership aimed at scaling tested and locally grounded policy and program innovations to redress gender inequalities in unpaid care work in Sub-Saharan Africa.