Foreword
The OECD Policy Dialogue on Women’s Economic Empowerment supports governments and development partners in their efforts to achieve women’s economic empowerment in developing countries. The Policy Dialogue is co-ordinated jointly by the OECD Development Co-operation Directorate, the Development Centre and Statistics Directorate. The initiative brings together their unique expertise and networks to identify policy and programme solutions to promote women’s economic empowerment, including by recognising, reducing and redistributing women’s unpaid care work, combined with inclusive dialogues at the regional and global levels.
The Policy Dialogue initiative draws on the comparative strengths of the three co-ordinating directorates within the OECD. The Development Co-operation Directorate (DCD) and the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) Network on Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment (GENDERNET) are working together, both to scale up financing for gender equality and to improve donor effectiveness in programming for women’s economic empowerment. The OECD Development Centre’s Social Institutions and Gender Index (SIGI) examines how gender inequality is shaped by discriminatory laws and social norms that affect women’s and girls’ lives. The OECD Statistics Directorate’s work on time-use data and analysis helps to understand how women and men spend their time, and allows for cross-country comparison.
As an output of the OECD Policy Dialogue on Women’s Economic Empowerment, this report focuses on identifying what works to address unpaid care work – a situation that can prevent women’s full participation in the economy. At the same time, care needs are growing globally, requiring action by governments and development partners to meet the needs of families and communities. The importance of addressing the burden of unpaid care work is recognised in Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 5 through adoption of Target 5.4: “Recognise and value unpaid care and domestic work”.
The report examines the four policy sectors highlighted in SDG Target 5.4: infrastructure, social protection, public services, and promotion of shared responsibility within the household. To understand the different approaches to each of the four sectors – and their relevance to and effectiveness in different contexts – the research team conducted a global literature review and three in-country research visits to Brazil, Kenya and Nepal, chosen for their geographic, policy and socio-economic diversity, as well as cross-country analysis to inform policy recommendations.