This research study across three countries – Kenya, UK, and Zimbabwe – was carried out to identify the dominant narratives that influence public perceptions of care and informal work. It enabled the researchers to develop and test new narratives that could be used to improve public attitudes towards care and informal work.
The Care Policy Scorecard provides a practical tool to assess and track the extent to which government policies related to care are adopted, budgeted for and implemented, and the extent to which they have a transformative effect on care. It can be used at the national or sub-national level. The Scorecard is intended to be used by civil society, government and academia alike.
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 overview document aims to highlight the approaches taken and lessons learned on unpaid care that Oxfam has implemented in collaboration with partners in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia.
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 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.
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.
