Press Release
In the past, Ethiopia has implemented several policy and institutional frameworks to enhance women’s empowerment. However, the implementation has been hindered by various factors including a disparity between policy discourse and reality on the ground. For example, according to World Bank data, in 2022, the labor force participation rate among females in Ethiopia was 75% as compared to 86.2% among males. One of the major contributing factors to this is the heavy burden of unpaid care work that women carry, which restricts their economic progress, and education levels. Moreover, according to a forecast done by UN Women on the time spent in unpaid care and domestic work, the proportion of time spent in unpaid care and domestic work in a 24-hour day by women in Ethiopia is 19.4 hours as compared to 7.9 by men. This unequal distribution of care responsibilities perpetuates gender gaps in employment, education, wages, and economic security. Although policies and institutional frameworks that focus on women, and child care policies, are taking crucial steps towards improving women’s unpaid care burden, it is necessary to ensure that practices align with policy discourses by establishing an evidence base and engaging with key policy actors.
The aforementioned limitations can be addressed through women’s economic empowerment (WEE) and by the 5Rs of unpaid care work (recognize, reduce, redistribute, reward and represent). In cognizant of this context, this project titled “Enhancing WEE and tackling unpaid care (WEE-UC)”, will help identify priority issues that key policy actors can address. This Press Statement aims to provide an insight into the project partners, objectives and goals, and illuminate the way forward.
This Project, primarily initiated by International Development Research Centre (IDRC)- Growth and Economic Opportunities for Women (GrOW) East Africa, aims to influence policies related to WEE and UCW in Ethiopia. This project is being implemented under a consortium of three organizations, namely Includovate, Addis Powerhouse, and Organization for Women in Self-Employment (WISE). Each organization comes with relevant expertise in gender analysis, women’s rights advocacy, and synthesizing fragmented evidence on WEE and UCW, all in the Ethiopian context. With this project, they aim to promote evidence-based capacity building of key policy actors, build a “CARE4Change” Coalition of WEE champions; and engage in advocacy/collaboration with key stakeholders to influence policies and actions. This includes utilizing policy windows, such as the ongoing revision of the National Policy on Ethiopian Women.
This project seeks to accomplish:
- Develop and test innovative policy uptake approaches that lead to improved public policies and actions to enhance women’s economic empowerment (WEE) and/or address unpaid care in Ethiopia;
- Build a culture of learning and improvement to facilitate course corrections and adjustments based on emerging evidence through continuous dialogue with policymakers, women’s advocates, private sector actors, donors, and academics actively working on WEE and care issues in the country;
- Strengthen collaboration and grow the pool of in-country gender champions through the WEE/Care community of practice and other mechanisms for sharing lessons, exploring solutions, and driving action.
The project will be testing innovative approaches while fostering a continuous dialogue with various stakeholders to make course corrections based on emerging evidence, collaboration and growth of gender champions through “CARE4Change” Coalition. Moreover, tailored training and workshops are aimed at influencing behavior and filling capacity gaps to ensure policymakers have access to evidence-based solutions to WEE and unpaid care. Another product of the project, “Teyaki“, is an online help desk established to provide rapid technical assistance and expert analysis to address the demands and needs of policymakers. Policy makers and other stakeholders can ask questions directly through the website as well as browse through various articles on the subject. The helpdesk contains extensive knowledge products such as literature reviews, policy analyses and blogs relevant to WEE and unpaid care.
Ultimately, the project aims to promote WEE and address unpaid care burden through three work streams. These include rapid technical assistance and expert analysis, capacity strengthening of key policy actors, and strengthening of an in-country coalition of key WEE champions. The consortium members have significant experience and expertise in each of the three workstreams, which creates an excellent opportunity to carry out the assignment in a complementary manner. Nonetheless, through this press release, we call for all interested actors working on WEE and UCW to reach out, collaborate with us to influence policy change, and explore the services and products we offer through this project.
Going forward, the team will develop an advocacy and communications strategy to disseminate knowledge products and information in a targeted manner. This is done with the goal of changing behavior/ attitude and creating a learning culture in the sector. A peer learning network will be established to help analyze the situation, rally supporters to validate knowledge products, build gender champions through collaboration, and drive accountability among policymakers. Beyond introducing these products, we encourage policy makers, potential partners, and relevant stakeholders to make use of the helpdesk and other knowledge products we have brought forward through this press release.