Reducing women’s care burden and improving their economic wellbeing through establishment of community-based childcare centers

There is mounting evidence that the lack of childcare services affects women’s employment and economic opportunities. It also limits women’s productivity and the type of employment women engage in, preventing them from taking more stable and lucrative employment opportunities. Although there is policy support for service provision to children under the age of four, there is a lack of evidence on which childcare model works best for different categories of poor working mothers in different contexts.

This project seeks to fill this gap by testing the effectiveness of a community-based childcare model in improving the economic wellbeing of poor working mothers across urban and peri-urban contexts in Ethiopia. It will also identify interventions needed to make community-based childcare centers more effective, affordable, and scalable. The knowledge generated from this project will be particularly relevant for informing recovery efforts to build a more gender-inclusive and responsive economy in the post-pandemic period. Using a cluster-randomized trial, the project will employ quantitative and qualitative methods of data collection. It will integrate social and behaviour change communication to address adverse social norms related to women’s unpaid care work.

This project is supported under the Growth and Economic Opportunities for Women (GrOW) East Africa initiative, jointly funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and IDRC.