Women who do both low income and unpaid care work suffer varied effects due to the overwhelming burden of engaging in both works, according to a new survey. The survey dubbed “Balancing unpaid care work and paid work” was conducted by ActionAid Rwanda in partnership with Institute of Development Studies (IDS) since August this year in Huye and Musanze districts. It involved 200 people. Unpaid care work include care for babies, cooking, fetching water, collecting firewood, looking after cattle among others that take mothers’ time besides other work they do. According to James Butare in charge of programming and policies at ActionAid, the research aimed to create understanding on how ‘women’s economic empowerment policy programming can avoid a double burden on working women and generate a ‘double boon’. Double boon means creating paid work that empowers women and also provides more support for their unpaid care work responsibilities. “We interviewed women with paid work in VUP and other women from women empowerment projects such as cooperatives. The research showed that they strongly value such work but they are overloaded with other work such as cooking, fetching water and firewood from far away, looking after babies because their wage is still too little to afford house helps who can do unpaid care work for them,” he said. Researchers say the overloading work can intensify double burden of work and can affect women’s physical and psychological wellbeing. Mothers reported constant sickness due to overworking such as back pain while children lacked parents’ attention with some going to bed before eating. Those interviewed said they take their infants with them to VUP work without caregivers yet when children cried it affected work. They also reported being overloaded as cultural gender norms still place the responsibility of household tasks on women. The survey showed that considering gender norms of paid work, women are engaged in care tasks at 94 per cent while men are at 2.8 per cent. This burden of undertaking unpaid care work to women worsens since they even took long journeys to reach their work place. The survey showed that in Gishamvu sector of Huye, 8 per cent of women spent more than two hours to reach work site while in Simbi sector 38 per cent spent about one hour. In Mbazi 58 per cent and 37 per cent in Muko sector in Musanze, spent about 30 minutes on foot to reach their work site. Women say they return home very tired but again undertake many care tasks at home. Recommendations The survey called on government and development partners to ease unpaid care work for women through setting up facilities such as water taps, and bio-gas for cooking to reduce long time spent on collecting water and firewood. It also appeals for more efforts in setting up early learning and development centers that can help mothers care for the children while they are at work far from their homes. The researchers called for better wages for those tasked with unpaid care workers and provision of credit to women to start business. The working systems should also allow flexible working and private spaces for breastfeeding to facilitate childcare arrangements while also trying to have them work closer to their homes. Faustin Mwambari, the acting director general of labor and employment at the ministry of Public Service and Labor said there is need for mindset change for men to support their women in unpaid care work by promoting more equal distribution of unpaid care work responsibilities. He said more employment programmes will continue to be devised by government with particular emphasis on vulnerable groups such as women and youth. editorial@newtimes.co.rw
