The care connection: The World Bank and women's unpaid care work in select sub-Saharan African countries

Arbeitspapier

With the aim of reducing women's greater unpaid care work than men&'s and increasing women's paid employment, this paper examines the extent to which World Bank investments address unpaid care work. The paper conducts an in-depth gender analysis of 36 World Bank employment-related projects in Malawi, Mali, Niger, and Rwanda. It concludes that the vast majority (92 per cent) of reviewed projects fail to account for unpaid care work. Exceptionally, Malawi's Shire River Basin Management Program and Niger's Community Action Program target women's needs as caretakers. But most reviewed projects do not address unpaid care work. Doing so would improve economic and human development and reduce gender inequality.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: WIDER Working Paper ; No. 2013/131

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Informal Economy; Underground Economy ; International Monetary Arrangements and Institutions ; International Lending and Debt Problems ; Time Allocation and Labor Supply
• Subject: gender ; World Bank ; sub-Saharan Africa ; employment ; care work

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Bibler, Sarah ; Zuckerman, Elaine
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): The United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER)
• (where): Helsinki
• (when): 2013

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/93728
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:43 AM CET