Making Care Visible: Women’s unpaid care work in Nepal, Nigeria, Uganda and Kenya

This report documents Action Aid's multi-country programme on women's unpaid care work. The programme, which is based in Kenya, Nigeria, Nepal and Uganda, recognises that while all women, regardless of class, race, caste and ethnicity, are expected to provide care as part of their roles as mothers, wives, and daughters, women living in poverty are disproportionately affected by this responsibility. Unpaid care is more difficult to do in the context of poverty as basic amenities, and access to public services are lacking. The aim of the programme is to promote a collective responsibility for care provision across numerous actors - women and men, the community and the government - in order to help to respect, protect and fulfil women’s rights.

The programme was inspired by the efforts of some national governments to measure time use and make visible women’s overall workload including their work in their own households. Action Aid has developed a participatory time diary tool that can be completed by the women and men involved in the programme, and helps generate new thinking about the time spent by different groups on care work. The findings from the diary analysis are documented in this report, along with participants' reflections on the findings and sections on national policy change and financing for public services.

Action Aid has outlined its commitment to this issue in its 2012-2017 strategy, stating its intention to make women’s unpaid care work central to demands for quality public services financed through more progressive domestic resource mobilisation.