Economic strengthening combined with family coaching on child protection issues, rather than implemented alone, may be more effective in reducing child's exposure to hazardous work. Additional research is needed to understand gender differences and causal links between different forms of child work and health hazards.
Care work is essential for personal wellbeing and for maintaining societies and a significant component of the economy. But across the world, it is overwhelmingly done by women, which restricts their opportunities for education, employment, political engagement and leisure. Policy makers rarely recognize the public responsibility for facilitating unpaid care and domestic work through investments in infrastructure and care services. In 2017, Oxfam's Women's Economic Empowerment and Care (WE-Care) initiative conducted a Household Care Survey (HCS), collecting data in the Philippines, Uganda and Zimbabwe, to inform the design of public policies and local development programmes. Based on responses from 4,734 women, men, boys and girls from 1,688 households, the study tests which infrastructure, equipment and other factors influence care-work patterns. The research finds that access to improved water sources is associated with reductions in hours of care work, and household equipment facilitates men's participation in care. Women report injuries and harm linked to heavy workloads. Perceptions of care work, community expectations and fear of sanctions for deviating from gendered care roles, i.e. social norms regarding gendered care roles, play an essential part in maintaining the gendered division of care work. The report suggests that further research is needed to explore in more detail the effect of public infrastructure and equipment on care-work divisions. In 2017, the HCS was conducted in the new districts of the Philippines, Zimbabwe and Uganda with support from Unilever, its laundry brand Surf and William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.
Oxfam Research Reports are written to share research results, to contribute to public debate and to invite feedback on development and humanitarian policy and practice. They do not necessarily reflect Oxfam policy positions. The views expressed are those of the author and not necessarily those of Oxfam.
This case study discusses the successes and challenges of the time use measurements used in Oxfam's Household Care Surveys. The surveys, supported by Oxfam's Women's Economic Empowerment and Care (WE-Care) programme, aimed to measure adults' and children's time spent on unpaid care work and other factors that could influence this distribution within the household. The measurements have been improved based on experience from three rounds of data collection in six developing countries. They make an important contribution to measuring care work, which is often underreported in conventional time use measures. Caring for people and domestic work such as cooking, cleaning and fetching water, is essential for personal wellbeing and survival. But across the world, care work is overwhelmingly done by women, which restricts their opportunities for education, employment, political engagement and leisure. Unpaid care work contributes to the market economy through maintaining a healthy, productive work force. However, government and private sector policy makers rarely recognize their duty to address unequal unpaid care work.
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