Online Reporter
Fatima Bulla-Musakwa
LONG before the sun rises, for thousands of women and girls in Zimbabwe, the day begins with household chores such as fetching water, cooking, cleaning, caring for husbands, children and the elderly.
Buttressing the trend is the African Care Economy Index, which reveals that Africa is the region with the most unshared system of care, with 70 percent of all care being provided by women within households.
While this work keeps households, communities and the entire nation afloat, women and girls face severe infrastructure gaps such as poor access to water and electricity, which forces them to spend valuable time on physically and mentally draining tasks.
This unpaid care and domestic work compound their existing domestic and professional workload.
Disturbingly, this leaves women trapped in time poverty, unable to engage in opportunities for leadership roles, education, participation in politics and other issues that are generally good for their well-being.
However, the #WeCareForHerEquality project seeks to change this narrative in Zimbabwe.
Funded by the International Development Research Centre and Global Affairs Canada under the Scaling Care Innovations in Africa, it aims to gather new research on care programmes, policies and systems that can be scaled across different settings on the continent.
The five-year partnership aims to scale tested and locally grounded policy and programme innovations to redress gender inequalities in unpaid care work in sub-Saharan Africa.
It is guided by the triple R approach to care economy, promoting actions that recognise, reduce and redistribute unpaid care work, supporting scaling of policy and programme innovation.
In Zimbabwe, the Women’s Academy for Leadership and Political Excellence, in partnership with the Ministry of Women’s Affairs, Community, Small and Medium Enterprises Development, is spearheading the project.
Other partners include Oxfam Zimbabwe, Women’s Parliamentary Caucus, the Zimbabwe Gender Commission, Women’s Coalition of Zimbabwe and Padare.
Already, a motion to enact an Unpaid Care and Domestic Work Act, which would compel the Government to recognise the value of unpaid care and domestic work, has been tabled in Parliament through the WPC.
Recently, stakeholders held a High-level Summit to ponder the next step after the motion was tabled in Parliament.
The conversation centred on how the shadow policy proposes to recognise both the economic and social worth of unpaid care and domestic work by costing a woman’s contribution in monetary form monthly.
Within the same initiative, there are calls for the Ministry of Finance and Economic Development and the Office of the President and Cabinet to integrate targets of Sustainable Development Goal 5 on the unpaid care and domestic work indicator into the National Development Strategy 2’s inclusive economic growth cluster.
It is expected that this will contribute positively towards efforts to reduce the labour and time spent by women and girls engaged in unpaid care and domestic work.
Walpe Director, Ms Sithabile Dewa, said numerous research studies were conducted to come up with the proposed Bill that would recognise invisible labour, promote gender equality, unlock opportunities and strengthen the well-being of women.
“Our argument as the women’s movement and others, such as Padare, is that there is need for the Government to formally recognise that unpaid care and domestic work is burdening women and girls in Zimbabwe.
“And there is a need when doing the national budgets to invest more in social services and infrastructure that will make life easier for women,” Ms Dewa said.
The policy also seeks to prioritise gender response, social security and protection measures so that women have an opportunity to improve themselves and compete with men on an equal footing. As part of the process of coming up with the proposed policy, representatives of the team embarked on leadership learning visits to Kenya, which is also at an advanced stage of enacting an Unpaid Care and Domestic Work Act.
Public hearings were held led by the MWASME, while nationwide research on the impact of domestic and unpaid care work on women and girls in Zimbabwe was also done by supporting partners.
In its research, Oxfam found out that just providing access to improved water sources could reduce women’s unpaid care work by four hours every day.
Ms Muchanyara Mukamuri, chairperson of the WCOZ National Coordinating Committee, stated that the policy’s goal is to determine the budgetary implications of women’s contributions so that the Minister of Finance and Economic Development can recognise and cost it.
“Even during divorce, some men would say, ‘This woman is not working, she hasn’t been working,’ yet she has been working all along. How much has she been working for in the 25 years of marriage that she has been in this family?” she said.
One of the key challenges to the proposed Bill is the underlying assumption that a woman is married through payment of bride price to perform domestic chores and provide care.
Also, it is perceived culturally to be against the norm for men to do household chores like bathing the children, washing or sweeping while the woman rests.
In their work in the communities, Padare/Enkundleni/Men’s Forum Director, Mr Walter Vengesayi, spotlighted the mammoth task that remains in trying to convince men to normalise doing unpaid care and domestic work.
“Men are even told, ‘You should get married for someone to look after you.’ So that is the understanding.
“It doesn’t matter if the man is a priest; it doesn’t matter if the man is a parliamentarian. The idea of getting a wife for most people is for someone to take care of the home.
“So, as men, we are working to change the perception that gender issues are solely women’s issues, helping everyone realise they are fundamentally human rights issues.
IDRC’s Programme Officer, Ms Evelyn Barake, said that when half the population, which is women and girls, are tied up with excessive care responsibilities, it adds up to massive lost opportunities for upscaling, developing leadership, contributing to the development of the economy, entrepreneurship and innovations, among others.
“Care work is fundamental to economies and societies. It is the labour that goes into ensuring that children survive, keeps people fed, keeps them housed, connected and alive.
“That’s what we call a care economy, which includes paid and unpaid care work. It’s crucial to the future of decent work and sustainable, inclusive societies,” Ms Barake said.
If enacted, the law will be a huge step towards achieving Sustainable Development Goal 5, which speaks to gender equality, whose fourth indicator seeks to recognise and value unpaid care and domestic work through the provision of public services, infrastructure and social protection policies as well as the promotion of shared responsibility within the household and family.
