Stakeholder Consultation Workshop on Care Work and Care Policies in the MENA Region

FromSep 28, 2019 To Sep 29, 2019

Amman, Jordan

The dynamics of the care economy are critical for women’s wellbeing in the Arab States. Gender role attitudes, adhering to the male breadwinner/female carer model, are prevalent in the Arab States. Domestic work is thus a rigid time constraint for women in MENA, and women’s hours in unpaid care work are not reduced even when they engage in market work outside the home. The burden of unpaid care work is thus a major barrier to Arab women’s participation in the paid labor force. ERF is launching a new research project addressing the above issue.  The overarching aim of this project is to produce evidence-based national policy recommendations for selected Arab States to feed into the MENA regional companion report to UN Women’s 2018 Progress of the World’s Women report Families in a changing world: public action for women’s rights. The project is fully funded by UN Women. A workshop is organized to bring together the ERF research team, representatives from UN Women, and international experts on care work and the care economy to review the project conceptual framework and make key decisions regarding the scope and focus of the analytic work and shape the way forward.

Context

The dynamics of the care economy are critical for women’s wellbeing in the Arab States. In addition to the centrality of unpaid and paid care work to women’s economic roles in the region, the weakness of institutional arrangements for early childhood care and education and long-term care for the elderly impact the development, health, and wellbeing of the youngest and the oldest in Arab societies. Gender role attitudes, adhering to the ‘male breadwinner/female carer model, are prevalent in the Arab States, including among youth (Sieverding and Hassan 2016; Promundo and UN-Women 2017). Domestic work is thus a rigid time constraint for women in MENA, and women’s hours in unpaid care work are not reduced even when they engage in market work outside the home (Assaad, Krafft, and Selwaness 2017). The burden of unpaid care work is thus a major barrier to Arab women’s participation in the paid labor force. The Arab States have the lowest female labor force participation rate (LFPR) of any world region, with the LFPR increasingly only modestly from 29 percent of women in 1997 to 34 percent in 2017. The gender gap in the LFPR was also higher in the Arab States, at 60 percentage points, than any other world region in 2017 (UN Women 2018).

Although many Arab women have taken on paid work, there is an absence or weakness of policies to support working women in many Arab States thus inhibiting women’s participation to the labor market in unintended ways (Assaad 2015). There is limited knowledge about the characteristics of and variation in paid and unpaid care work across the Arab States, and very little research that links an analysis of the care economy in the region to current care policies. Recent global reports have made important contributions towards defining care work and the care economy, identifying variations in the care economy across countries and regions, and highlighting best practice policy recommendations (ILO 2018; UN Women 2018). Yet these reports do not provide detailed, country-specific analysis of the characteristics of the care economy and current state of care policies in Arab States that can be used to develop specific national policy recommendations that address key challenges and national priorities.

The overarching aim of this project is to produce such evidence-based national policy recommendations for selected Arab States as part of a MENA regional companion report to UN Women’s 2018 Progress of the World’s Women report Families in a changing world: public action for women’s rights. The project is fully funded by UN Women. The key outputs of this project include a regional overview report and detailed case studies of care work and care policies in Egypt, Jordan, Palestine, Tunisia and Morocco. Policy briefs summarizing key recommendations for each case study country will also be produced.

Workshop objectives

The purpose of the inception workshop is to bring together the ERF research team, representatives from UN Women, and international experts on care work and the care economy to review the project concept note and make key decisions regarding the scope and focus of the analytic work. The specific objectives of the workshop are to:

  1. Review results of discussions with UN Women country offices on national priorities in the case study countries
  2. Review the initial results of the data availability mapping in the case study countries and brainstorm additional possible data sources.
  3. Finalize the research questions; and
  4. Agree on the care policies that the project will focus on

The workshop will convene for one day, which includes four sessions that will provide ample time to discuss the technical proposal, country case studies, and an opportunity for consultation/open discussion.

The second day will be a closed, half-day meeting for report contributors and will focus on technical aspects of the quantitative data analysis.