Policy Brief Issue 27 INVESTING IN CHILDCARE FOR WOMEN’S ECONOMIC EMPOWERMENT Authors: Aletheia Donald, Francisco Campos, Julia Vaillant, and Maria Emilia Cucagna Two thirds of sub-Saharan Africa’s citizens depend on agriculture for their livelihoods. Women make up a large part of the agricultural workforce: in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), over 80 percent of women work in farming compared to 60 percent of GENDER men. However, women face a variety of constraints which limit the time they can devote INNOVATION LAB to working or supervising farm labor and reduce the productivity of their plots. Increasing The Gender Innovation women’s agricultural productivity has the potential not only to improve their own economic Lab (GIL) conducts impact status, but also to enhance economic growth and food security in their communities. evaluations of development The Gender Innovation Lab (GIL) used a combination of consultations in the field, desk interventions in Sub-Saharan research, and primary data collection to understand the patterns of time allocation Africa, seeking to generate evidence on how to close in rural households in Western DRC, and to assess the factors to consider when the gender gap in earnings, designing effective interventions aimed at increasing women’s agricultural productivity. productivity, assets and agency. The GIL team is HERE’S WHAT WE FOUND currently working on over • Women farmers in the Western DRC bear the disproportionate 50 impact evaluations in 21 burden of providing unpaid carework. Women spend less time countries with the aim of than men on their plots and more time on domestic work. building an evidence base with lessons for the region. • The gender differences in time allocation are striking: female plot managers do 1 hour and 52 minutes more of domestic work per day than male plot The impact objective of GIL is managers, the gender differences are higher in male-headed households, increasing take-up of effective and female plot managers spend significantly more time taking care of policies by governments, development organizations children when farming or going to market than their male counterparts. and the private sector in order • The agricultural productivity of female plot managers is on average 26 to address the underlying percent lower than that of male plot managers. Having young children causes of gender inequality is associated with lower productivity for women but not for men. in Africa, particularly in terms of women’s economic and These findings suggest that subsidized childcare could be used by women to shift their social empowerment. The lab time-use patterns, and thereby increase their economic productivity. More than 60 percent aims to do this by producing of individuals surveyed by GIL reported being likely to leave their children in childcare if it and delivering a new body of was available. However, the effectiveness of offering childcare as a pathway to increasing evidence and developing a women farmers’ productivity in Sub-Saharan is mostly unknown. Building on the results compelling narrative, geared from the study, GIL designed an intervention that would be suited to the population’s towards policymakers, on what needs, to start bridging the knowledge gap on using childcare to alleviate time constraints works and what does not work faced by women farmers. This intervention is embedded within the larger DRC Western in promoting gender equality. Growth Poles Project, a IDA-funded project implemented by the Ministry of Finance. http://www.worldbank.org/en/programs/africa-gender-innovation-lab TAILORING IMPLEMENTATION: KEY FACTORS TO CONSIDER The Gender Innovation Lab identified three key factors to be considered when designing a childcare intervention, to specifically address the time constraints faced by women farmers. First, one must determine the degree of formality of the center. This is particularly crucial considering that lack of trust emerged as a key challenge for take- up, based on survey results. For women who are unwilling to leave their children in a childcare center, lack of trust in the quality of care others would provide (through witchcraft, neglect or ineptitude) is extremely prevalent in communities. Women are also concerned about the cost of formal childcare centers, while this is less of a concern for community-based care. Based on these considerations, GIL developed a hybrid intervention to test whether it can adequately address the population’s needs. FORMAL INFORMAL HYBRID Infrastructure – such as a Informal arrangements between Only infrastructure already school or classroom – is community members existing in the village is used financed by the project Includes rotating scheme, where Low-cost play-based Food is provided groups of women band together curricula found highly and take turn as “caretaker” effective in other settings Children are provided with toys is used to promote and activities designed to aid Distrust towards other members of child development their cognitive stimulation the groups (ex fear of witchcraft) Center is run by a community can make this arrangement member, but they are Parents can usually not afford difficult to implement provided with in-depth to pay the actual cost Concerns about early childhood professional training and Centers are thus heavily subsidized are remunerated by the development outcomes Once funds run out, they can due to an inexperienced, project for their work no longer be maintained rotating care provider A second consideration is the age of children who will be enrolled in the childcare center. Opening up the center to children below the age of two raises a host of logistical issues, such as different types of training of care providers, activities that children this young can engage in, and breastfeeding needs -which prove very cumbersome for the mothers in the field. A potential arrangement is offering a shorter time window during which children between the ages of 1 and 2 can be left in the childcare center. A last factor is how the success of these programs is evaluated. Childcare interventions are typically implemented to affect early childhood development outcomes. The impact on mothers is rarely comprehensively addressed, though we know that lack of time can be a binding constraint for women’s economic participation. GIL will analyze the impacts of the childcare centers on women’s productivity in farming and non-farming activities. FOR MORE INFORMATION, PLEASE CONTACT With the support of various stakeholders, we will pilot the provision of childcare services, evaluating their impact on women’s time allocation to Markus Goldstein productive activities, as well as on their productivity. This study will fill a mgoldstein@worldbank.org knowledge gap on what works to increase women’s agricultural productivity. afrgenderlab@worldbank.org To learn more on this study: https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/30118 1818 H St NW Washington, DC 20433 USA This work has also been funded in part by The Umbrella Facility for Gender Equality (UFGE), a World Bank Group multi- donor trust fund expanding evidence, knowledge and data needed to identify and address key gaps between men and women to deliver better development solutions that boost prosperity and increase opportunity for all. The UFGE has received generous contributions from Australia, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Iceland, Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, and the United States. The first draft of this policy brief was released in August 2018.