Empowering women through provision of quality childcare services and strengthening their capacities to engage in paid labor opportunities: Preliminary findings from Nakuru County

  • February 2023
  • Briefing Papers

Women spend disproportionately more time on unpaid work such as childcare and household chores than men. Childcare responsibilities and household chores seem to impede women’s participation in paid work. The quality and cost of paid childcare services also influence a woman’s decision to take her children to childcare facilities and engage in employment or stay at home and look after her children. Interventions that provide alternative childcare options can enable women to meaningfully contribute to economic production processes.

The challenges faced by women in balancing childcare and paid work are compounded in low-income urban contexts where employment opportunities are limited, and fragmented social networks often mean that mothers cannot rely on kin to provide childcare support. Work-related constraints such as long working hours and workplace environments that are not conducive for parenting obligations such as exclusive breastfeeding, further frustrate women’s ambitions.

In awareness of this gap and to have a sustainable solution, Kidogo, a social enterprise, seeks to improve women’s access to high-quality, affordable early childhood care and education to support their children’s healthy growth and development. The the overall purpose of the study which was carried out by the African Population and Health Research Center (APHRC) was to evaluate the effectiveness of the Kidogo model in improving women’s labor outcomes and identify aspects of the model that could work in other settings.

Download

CONTRIBUTORS

Head of Early Childhood Development (ECD)

Patricia Kitsao-Wekulo

Patricia obtained a PhD in Psychology from the University of…

View Profile

Communications Officer

Charity Waweru-Mwangi

Charity Waweru-Mwangi is a Communications Officer in the Synergy Unit…

View Profile

Research Officer

Linda Oloo

Linda is a Research Officer whose work mostly focuses on…

View Profile

Post-Doctoral Research Scientist

Silas Onyango

Silas Onyango is a Post-doctoral Research Scientist in the Human…

View Profile

Research Scientist

Margaret Nampijja

Dr Margaret Nampijja is a developmental psychologist with a medical…

View Profile