Women Informal Workers Demand Child Care: Shifting Narratives on Women's Economic Empowerment in Africa

The inclusion of a specific Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) target (5.4) addressing women's and girls' unequal responsibility for unpaid care work is cited, by feminists and women's rights organisations, as progress compared to the previous Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Governments are tasked with rolling out public services and social protection measures to reduce the time women spend on domestic chores and taking care of children and other household members. Sub-Saharan Africa is characterised by high female-labour force participation rates with most women working in the informal economy without access to social protection. The lack of basic infrastructure and public services contributes to the already disproportionate share of unpaid care work that has to be done, which impinges on their capacity to earn an income and accrue savings, and also impacts negatively on their health and wellbeing. African governments have taken an ambiguous position on the issue of unpaid care work, with some leaders taking to the stage to support this agenda, while most African leaders and policies tend to privilege traditional family structures of care provision. Yet the experience of women informal workers in Africa's cities reflects the urgent need for child care due to demographic shifts, and changing family structures amidst rising urbanisation rates. This article will draw on research on women informal workers and child care in urban South Africa and Ghana conducted by the action-research-policy network Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing & Organizing (WIEGO). It will explore how women informal workers' demands for child care services can shift established narratives on social protection and women's economic empowerment which all too often fail to see women both as workers and primary care givers. This raises possibilities for women informal workers and their organisations to build regional and global solidarity networks around care and social protection that could inform both the workers' movement and feminist movements on the continent. As such the SDG target 5.4 may provide one useful avenue for advocacy, but it must be grounded in the lived realities of African women both as workers and carers to be relevant and effective in changing policies.