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

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.