Smart investment in global childcare requires local solutions and a coordinated research agenda
Date
2023
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
BMJ Global Health
Abstract
Childcare is a smart investment and key for
advancing gender equity. An emerging body
of evidence demonstrates that providing
childcare services contributes to improved
health, well-being and economic opportunities for children, women, families and
communities with potential for intergenerational impacts.1–4 For these reasons, investment in care systems is said to result in a ‘triple
dividend’: facilitating women’s entry into the
labour market, promoting child development
and boosting employment in the care sector,
a predominantly female workforce.3
Nonetheless, attention to and investment in accessible,
affordable, context-specific and high-quality
care services still lag behind other forms
of social protection. For example, despite
an unprecedented global response to the
pandemic, out of 3099 social protection and
labour market measures enacted or planned
by governments through July 2021, less than
20% took gender into account, and only 7%
supported unpaid care.5
Support of unpaid
care was particularly low in sub-Saharan
Africa, representing only 2% of all measures.
Recognising the critical role of robust care
systems in catalysing changes in gender norms
around women’s participation in economic
activities (and men’s role in care work), child-care is high on the post-pandemic agenda.4 6–8
The Generation Equality Forum in Paris in
2021 galvanised commitment to address the
care crisis, launching the Childcare Incentive
Fund. The fund mobilises $180million in new
investment to support the design and implementation of childcare programmes, and
to improve evidence generation and policy
designs in low/middle-income countries.9
While this is a welcome step, efforts are needed
to ensure an approach that prioritises locally
led and culturally adapted implementation, systems-building and evidence-generation by
national scholars. Without these efforts, the
agenda on childcare risks misalignment with
local realities and national policy priorities.
In this commentary, we highlight the value
of a coordinated research agenda taking an
African regional perspective. In discussion
with childcare implementers and researchers
involved in the Growth and Economic
Opportunities for Women (GrOW) cross-country childcare research and programming portfolio, we propose four key areas and corresponding
questions which could serve as a starting point for such a
research agenda. We highlight innovative local solutions
to the childcare crisis as examples and inspiration for
how investment can be nationally led and lay the ground-work for systems-building. In closing, we discuss broader
issues linked to unpaid care work, as well as policy and
structural barriers which must be addressed to advance
the childcare agenda and women’s social and economic
empowerment in Africa and beyond.
Description
Research Article