Proposed unpaid care work policy to protect women

Women harvest French green beans on one of Njukini Co-oporative farms in Taita Taveta on January 27, 2020. Women spend more time on domestic work than men.

Photo credit: Fredrik Lerneryd | FAO | AFP

What you need to know:

  • In Kenya, women spend up to 11.1 hours a day on domestic work unlike the 2.9 hours that men donate to similar duties.
  • Time poverty, a result of the long hours that women spend doing non-income activities, has been attributed to low economic status of women in Kenya and across the region.

The State Department of Gender is in the process of establishing a policy on unpaid care work, providing a framework for compensating women who are disproportionately represented in unwaged labour.

Time poverty, a result of the long hours that women spend doing non-income activities, has been attributed to low economic status of women in Kenya and across the region.

In Kenya, women spend up to 11.1 hours a day on domestic work unlike the 2.9 hours that men donate to similar duties, based on Oxfam Kenya's findings in its 2019 report on Gendered Patterns on Unpaid Care and Domestic Work in the Urban Informal Settlements of Nairobi.

A 2018 study by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), which looked into the burden of unpaid work on women’s participation in paid work, found women in Tanzania spend 3.5 times more minutes per day on unpaid care and domestic work than men. 

In Rwanda, it is three times more minutes per day for women, while Uganda paints a more egalitarian picture, with women spending 1.2 times more minutes per day on unpaid work than men.

Burden

UNCTAD was concerned that “Women’s unpaid care and domestic work burden limits the number of hours they can devote to productive on-farm and off-farm activities.”

Ms Nancy Sitonik, the principal gender officer in the State Department of Gender, raised a similar issue during a recent virtual launch of women economic empowerment community of practice in Kenya by the International Centre for Research on Women-Africa (ICRW-Africa).

“Unpaid care work is a major barrier towards the achievement of gender equality and women economic empowerment…it is a critical development, economic and gender equality issue in Kenya,” she said.

The unpaid care policy the department is currently developing would provide a legal framework to enhance a decent work environment and review existing employment and labour laws, she said.

Survey

The Kenya National Bureau of Statistics gender statistician, Caroline Mutwiri, also said the State agency has embarked on a time use survey, which shows differences in how men and women spend their 24 hours. This would be the first time Kenya is undertaking such a survey.

In 2020, in collaboration with UN Women, the agency launched Gender Sector Statistics Plan to strengthen Kenya’s statistical capacity on gender matters.

Ms Mutwiri said the survey findings would inform the allocation of resources to women's economic empowerment programmes and related policies.

Dr Carolyne Ajema, ICRW Africa senior gender and gender-based violence specialist, however, noted the need to adopt a multisectoral approach to advancing women’s economic empowerment.

She said unpaid care work is one of many factors that impede women’s economic empowerment.

“We need to use evidence to shift some of the narratives that have continued to perpetuate gender inequalities,” she said.