Integrate the unpaid care and domestic work dimension in all UN Women programmes on climate resilient agriculture and women's economic empowerment. This will be also done by embedding unpaid care and domestic work to the three Gender Equality Accelerators that the economic empowerment section is leading on, in particular on transforming the care economy. |
HQ: Silvia Lanzarini, Programme Specialist JP RWEE
ESARO: Mehjabeen Alarakhia, WEE Advisor
WCARO: Elena Ruiz Abril, WEE Policy Advisor |
2025/12
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Initiated
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ESARO:
UN Women is linking its initiatives to the care-climate nexus in East and Southern Africa, recognizing how climate change exacerbates women’s care responsibilities, particularly in rural areas, due to environmental degradation, water scarcity, and food insecurity. In response, the RO integrates unpaid care work into its climate-resilient agriculture and economic empowerment programs, introducing energy- and labor-saving technologies such as clean cooking solutions, water harvesting, and water-efficient farming. These innovations reduce women's time poverty and improve overall well-being. Care service initiatives have also been incorporated into entrepreneurship and climate-resilient agriculture programs, establishing community-based childcare solutions that further redistributes women's care responsibilities and enhance their participation in income-generating activities. Additionally, ESARO continues advocating for the inclusion of unpaid care work in national policies and development plans, advancing progress in reducing care responsibilities and increasing financing for the care economy.
UN Women continues integrating unpaid care and domestic work in its ongoing and new economic empowerment and CSA programmes worldwide, for ex. the Joint Programme on Accelerating Progress Towards Rural Women's Economic Empowerment currently in its second phase and implemented in six countries (including Rwanda, where there is a component of water harvesting systems and improved cooking stoves for time poverty reduction).
WCARO:
UN Women continues to integrate unpaid care and domestic work into its ongoing and new economic empowerment strategies in the WCA region, particularly through building on the Gender Equality Accelerator “Transforming Care”
• Our new Strategy to Transform Care Systems in West and Central Africa sets a framework for the 10 country offices and 14 NRAs in the region. This strategy aims to transform care systems by 2030 by increasing access to unpaid care solutions for 100,000 grassroots women and girls in rural and urban-poor areas in low-income countries, supporting the creation of 150,000 low-carbon, decent direct, indirect, and induced jobs in the care and other sectors, and strengthening 10 legal frameworks through the adoption of care normative changes by 2030.
• WCARO recognizes the care-climate nexus and how climate change exacerbates women’s disproportionate care responsibilities, particularly in rural areas, by increasing the time spent collecting wood, water, and nutritious food due to deforestation, soil degradation, drought, and erratic rainfall, increasing the time spent caring for sick family members due to climate-induced illness or natural disasters, and increasing the time spent looking after children and the elderly when communities are displaced by disasters. WCARO is mainstreaming unpaid care work into its climate-resilient agriculture and economic empowerment programs by introducing time-, energy-, and labor-saving technologies such as clean cooking solutions (e.g., providing 6,600 families with improved cookstoves in Mali and providing women farmers access to time-saving climate-smart technologies for productive and domestic use in Senegal).
• The Feminist Economists Taskforce initiative will continue to provide technical assistance to UN Women COs, UNCT, and stakeholders in the region to drive normative changes (reforms and investments) to recognize, reduce, and redistribute women’s unpaid care work. In 2024, WCARO supported the inclusion of care into national policies, with 4 national care policy dialogues in Mali, Liberia, Nigeria, and Côte d’Ivoire, and the adoption of care roadmaps/call to action in the 4 countries. Additionally, WCARO is supporting country offices and partners in integrating care considerations into local planning, with 19 municipalities in Senegal incorporating care into their local development plans this year.
• In 2024, UN Women will build the economic case for unpaid care in WCA by facilitating policy dialogue at the regional and national levels on unpaid care models adapted to contexts of high informality and low fiscal space, strengthening coalitions of stakeholders to promote gender-transformative care policies in West and Central Africa. In November, UN Women and IDRC hosted the third edition of the Symposiums on Women’s Economic Empowerment and the Care Economy in West Africa, convening over 150 stakeholders under the theme “Innovative solutions for the recognition, reduction, and redistribution of women’s unpaid care work in West Africa: from action research to effective reforms,” culminating in a regional declaration-to-action. |