This policy brief outlines why unpaid care work is a critical development, economic and gender equality issue for Kenya. It draws on two sets of evidence from Oxfam’s Women’s Economic Empowerment and Care (WE-Care) programme, which explore the impact of women and girls’ heavy and unequal unpaid care responsibilities both before and during COVID-19.
This toolkit provides guidance on using Oxfam’s Household Care Survey (HCS) methodology, which was developed by Oxfam as part of the WE-Care initiative to transform the provision of unpaid care and domestic work (UCDW).
New research by Oxfam and partners reveals that while COVID-19 and the related containment efforts have caused increases in women’s – and men’s – unpaid care workloads, women are still doing the bulk of this work.
Across Africa, ambitions to achieve inclusive and sustainable development are being undermined by inadequate investment in the care economy. Women and girls are providing millions of hours of unpaid care and domestic work (UCDW) – a provision which props up the economy and underpins society, yet remains under-recognized, undervalued and under-invested in.
Economic inequality is out of control. In 2019, the world’s billionaires, only 2,153 people, had more wealth than 4.6 billion people. This great divide is based on a flawed and sexist economic system that values the wealth of the privileged few, mostly men, more than the billions of hours of the most essential work – the unpaid and underpaid care work done primarily by women and girls around the world.
The evaluation findings show that in two years of implementation, the project was successful in reducing women’s time on care tasks and in promoting recognition of unpaid care in policies at local level. It also made considerable progress towards more gender-equitable distribution of care work, contributing towards shifting both norms and behaviour around unpaid care and domestic work.
The report celebrates the successes of the project and the communities the project has supported, and recognizes the unique contributions of its partners in the Philippines and Zimbabwe. It highlights challenges the project has faced and overcome and documents key lessons to guide future unpaid care programming.
Overall, the evaluation finds that there is evidence unpaid care work is being reduced and redistributed. However, more sustained effort may be needed to shift social norms regarding who performs care work before awareness can be translated into positive behaviour. Nonetheless, efforts on recognition and representation are gaining more traction among people in the community.
In 2018–2019, Oxfam's Women's Economic Empowerment and Care (WE-Care) programme conducted a Household Care Survey (HCS) in five informal settlements of Nairobi, Kenya, to understand the gendered patterns of unpaid care and domestic work across these communities.
This report summarizes the main findings from the qualitative research conducted as part of the WE-Care (Women’s Economic Empowerment and Care) programme in the second half of 2017 to support on the identification of the main social norms related to unpaid care and domestic work.
