Gender

J UL Y 2 0 1 4
By Jessica Woodroffe
and Kate Donald
6

Unpaid care
A priority for the post-2015 development goals and
beyond

Summary
The unpaid care work that women and girls do sustains families, communities and
whole societies - and yet it has been consistently ignored and taken for granted in
public policy and in development efforts. It appears that now, finally, there is an
emerging consensus around its importance, based on an ever-growing body of
evidence on the impact of unpaid care work on gender equality, women’s rights and
poverty.

The Gender and Development Network is delighted that women’s disproportionate
burden of unpaid care is now being discussed in the context of the post-2015 global
development framework. In all countries, recognising, reducing and redistributing
unpaid care work can have a major positive impact on achieving gender equality,
realising women’s rights and in meeting other development goals, by freeing up
women’s time and boosting their social status, earning power and political participation.

But there is still a risk it could be left out of the final post-2015 goals, partly due to
some misunderstandings of the issue. Looking back on this process in 10 or 15 years,
this exclusion would be cause for great regret; just as the omission of violence against
women from the Millennium Development Goals – in the face of claims that it was a
‘cultural’ issue and not relevant to development - is now seen as a clear oversight.

This is not about providing ‘wages for housework’, nor about reducing the overall
amount of care provided, nor preventing women from making their own choices about
when and how to provide care. The goal is to ensure care work is more fairly shared
between women and men, and better supported by the State in the form of accessible
public services and investment in technology and infrastructure. All people should be
able to enjoy high quality care, but the costs and burdens should be more evenly
distributed, and caregivers should not have to sacrifice their rights, income or
opportunity.

The heavy and unequal burden of unpaid care work borne by women and girls –
common to every country - is a major barrier to achieving gender equality and realising
their human rights. The time and opportunity costs restrict women’s ability to earn

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income from paid work, undermine girls and women’s education, and prevent their full
participation in politics and public affairs, while also adversely affecting their health. It
has the greatest impact on the poorest women (who cannot afford private services or
domestic technologies, and often live in areas underserved by public services),
perpetuating their poverty and increasing their social exclusion. It also entrenches
inequality on class, racial and ethnic lines.

Negative stereotypes of care as ‘women’s work’ also assign women and girls inferior
social status and isolate them in the home. This in turn has negative impacts on a
range of social and economic goals, including poverty reduction and the promotion of
children’s health and education. It also makes for bad policy decisions and limits
economic productivity.

The briefing includes recommendations for a target on unpaid care under a standalone
gender equality goal in the SDGs, building on the proposals of the Open Working
Group. The target would set out the need to fully recognise the extent of unpaid care
work, and reduce the amount of care work poor women do - through fairer sharing
between men and women and provision of care and public services by governments.

We propose indicators for this target that would foster and assess progress in a
number of areas. Crucially all of these are measurable, and many are based on data
that is already being collected.

Finally, in section 5, we look at practical ways to achieve change, by setting out
different approaches and measures – ranging from scaling up piped water
infrastructure to tackling social norms through education. We highlight success stories
across different countries to show that these actions are feasible and can have a
profound impact in removing barriers to the achievement of gender equality and
women’s rights.

Ultimately, the aim for 2015, 2030 and beyond is to create societies in which unpaid
care work is recognised and valued by governments and the general public as a crucial
social and economic good. Unpaid care work would be understood as a collective
responsibility - to be shared more equally between women and men, households and
the State. High-quality care would be accessible to all, including the poorest people;
and people who perform unpaid care work would have greater choices, opportunities,
and voice to participate in politics, the workplace, social and cultural life.

The inclusion of a target on unpaid care work in the post-2015 agenda would represent
an important symbolic and practical step towards this aim, providing much needed
political focus and resources. Progress towards the target should improve the well-
being of care-givers and care-receivers, and have a positive impact on gender equality,
sustainable development, poverty reduction, and economic growth.



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1. Introduction - Why now?
After years of exclusion from development debates, unpaid care work is now gaining
recognition as a major determinant of gender inequality, women’s empowerment and
poverty. With negotiations around the post-2015 development agenda (the Sustainable
Development Goals or SDGs) in full swing, a striking consensus is emerging about the
importance of this issue.
1
While the post-2015 framework will not be a solution to all the
problems and injustices resulting from the unequal distribution and under-valuation of
unpaid care work, it is a potential channel through which to make progress; and an
opportunity which must be seized.

The aim is to foster a more equal sharing of unpaid care between women and men,
and ensure care is better supported through public services and resources. It is not, as
is sometimes thought, about paying ‘wages for housework’. Neither is the goal to
reduce the overall amount of care provided – far from it – it is to reduce the amount of
time and drudgery it takes to provide a high quality level of care, and to share
responsibility for its provision more fairly. Moreover, this is about increasing women’s
choices, not preventing women from choosing, for example, to care for their children
full-time.

Importantly, women’s overwhelming responsibility for unpaid care work is not a
‘cultural’ issue to be relegated to the private sphere: it is a global phenomenon with
profound social and economic impacts. Only too recently, violence against women was
seen as a private, ‘cultural’ issue with no relevance to development – so much so that it
was not included in the Millennium Development Goals. There is now near-universal
consensus that this was a grave oversight. We must not make the same mistake with
unpaid care, especially given that States and civil society groups from very different
countries and regions– ranging from Europe to Latin America to the G77 - have
emphasized the need for it to be included in the post-2015 agenda.
2


Below we lay out the compelling reasons why unpaid care work should be a priority
issue for the post-2015 framework, and describe how a target and indicators on unpaid
care could be formulated. In the final section, we present some practical proposals for
how countries can make progress towards recognising, reducing and redistributing
unpaid care work – under the auspices of the SDGs and beyond. In this we have
drawn on work on unpaid care by members of the Gender and Development Network
(GADN), outlined in the final textbox.


2. Why focus on unpaid care work?
2.1 Women’s disproportionate burden
Women’s disproportionate burden of unpaid care work is a major factor in creating and
perpetuating gender inequality. It limits women’s progress, rights and opportunities in
all spheres of life – including education, employment and political participation.


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Unpaid care work is also central to the functioning of the economy and society. If
included in national accounts, the unpaid care economy would represent between 15 to
over 50 percent of national Gross Domestic Products.
3


What is unpaid care work?

 Domestic work: cooking and food preparation, cleaning, washing clothes,
water and fuel collection.
 Direct care of persons: including children, older persons, persons with
disabilities, and able-bodied adults.
4

 Unpaid care work may take place in the household or in the wider community,
but in this briefing we focus mainly on the work done in/for the household.
5

In every country and region of the world, women perform the majority of unpaid
care work – and work longer hours than men overall.
6
The 2012 World Development
Report found that globally women devote 1 to 3 hours more a day to housework than
men; 2 to 10 times the amount of time a day to care (of children, elderly, and the sick),
and 1 to 4 hours less a day to market activities.
7
Other research had similar findings -
on average, women spend twice as much time on household work as men and four
times as much time on childcare.
8


Women living in poverty have particularly heavy unpaid care workloads, because
they cannot afford private services or domestic technologies, and often live in areas
underserved by infrastructure and public services. For many of these women,
especially those who have to collect water and fuel for domestic use, their care work is
a demanding full-time job
9
, with no pay and little recognition or status. The unequal
distribution of unpaid care work also creates and entrenches inequality along class,
race and ethnicity lines. Often, minority and migrant women are most severely affected,
forced to combine badly paid work with care for their own household, with very limited
access to services and social protection.
10
This also has international ramifications, as
growing numbers of women leave the Global South to take on jobs abroad as domestic
workers in richer destination countries, while family members that remain at home must
reallocate care responsibilities in their absence – usually to older women or girls.
11


2.2 International agreements
The need to count, value and redistribute unpaid care work, and ensure it is not an
obstacle to women’s rights and opportunities, was emphasized twenty years ago in the
Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action.
12
International human rights law also
establishes several legally binding obligations that compel States to address the
unequal distribution of unpaid care work, given its profound impact on women’s
rights.
13
However, unpaid care work has still not been given the recognition (both in
national policy and global development policy) that it needs and deserves.


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2.3 The impact of unpaid care on women and girls
Women’s income, social status, rights and opportunities are profoundly limited by their
‘role’ as the primary providers of unpaid care due to time constraints, social isolation in
the household, and the low status given to care work and those who do it. Reducing
the unpaid care work women do would thus remove major obstacles to their economic
and political empowerment.

Paid work
Unpaid care work creates a significant gender inequality in work hours: women work
longer hours than men, but are only paid for 25- 50 percent of their working hours,
where men are paid for 60-90 percent of their hours worked.
14
Women’s
disproportionate share of unpaid care work limits their time and opportunities for decent
paid work. In Latin America and the Caribbean, over half of women aged 20-24 cited
their unpaid care work as their main reason for not seeking a job outside the home
(more than the number of their peers in the education system).
15
Unpaid care work also
contributes to the gender pay gap and forces women into informal and precarious work
settings – partly because of their more limited opportunities to access decent formal
work, but also because they need flexible working hours. Gender stereotypes are rife in
the labour market, defining work in caring professions as naturally feminine and low-
skilled, thereby justifying their low pay and low status – with particular impact on
women of colour and migrants.

The distribution of unpaid care work thus affects women’s income, savings and
pensions and perpetuates their economic disempowerment, in the household and in
wider society. 80 percent of family caregivers in South Africa have reported that their
income is reduced because of their care work.
16


Education
The right to education is also impacted: some girls may be withdrawn from school to
help with domestic chores and care of younger siblings; many more will have their time
for study or school activities cut short by domestic responsibilities. A survey in 16
countries found that 10 percent of girls aged 5-14 perform household chores for 28
hours or more weekly (approximately twice the hours spent by boys), with a
measurable impact on their school attendance.
17
Later in life, women overall have less
time for further education or training opportunities than men because of their care
responsibilities.

Health
The lack of time and money may also block women’s access to health services, which
is particularly problematic because heavy care workloads can take a huge toll on
health. Care work can be arduous, emotionally stressful, and even dangerous (for
example through exposure to communicable diseases or fumes/burns from cooking
stoves)
18
. Studies show that HIV/AIDS caregivers experience a negative impact on
physical and mental health.
19



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Violence
The distribution of care work exacerbates the gendered power imbalances that make
women vulnerable to violence. Caring responsibilities can also isolate women who
experience domestic violence, thereby constraining their access to services, support or
opportunities to secure their rights. Meanwhile, in some contexts women and girls are
at risk of assault while fetching fuel or water.

Care crises and budget cuts

In countries heavily affected by the HIV/AIDS pandemic, women and girls provide
between 70 and 90 percent of the care to people living with HIV/AIDS
20
, and many
of them are being pulled out of paid work to take care of the ill or dying
21
. Rather
than boosting public health budgets, many state policies increasingly rely on
unpaid home-based care: essentially shifting the burden of care from public
institutions to poor families, and from public health workers to very poor women
who already carried a disproportionate burden of unpaid care work.
22
The long-
term social and economic costs of this strategy have been greatly under-
estimated; women’s disproportionate role in providing this care intensifies their
poverty and insecurity, and that of their dependents.
23


Nor is such a phenomenon confined to developing countries: austerity policies
implemented in developed countries over recent years have also slashed
healthcare and disability care budgets, meaning that households have to fill the
gaps in care created. For the most part, it is women living in poverty who are
meeting these unavoidable care needs at ever-increasing cost to their well-being
and steadily eroding their coping mechanisms.
24


Political influence
Unpaid care work can be a major obstacle to women’s ability to participate in politics
and public affairs – from community decision-making forums to national parliaments.
This is partly due to time constraints and practical difficulties (especially without access
to free or affordable childcare). It is also due to the pervasive gender stereotypes that
stifle their political voice by dictating that women’s ‘place is in the home’ while men
dominate the public sphere.

Social status
Gender stereotypes related to family, care and work are pervasive and pernicious in
and across every society – for example casting men as breadwinners and women as
carers and nurturers. These create constrained social roles for women and girls,
limiting their power, choices, dignity, rights and opportunities – and casting them as
second-class citizens. Transgressing or challenging these stereotypes can be met with
emotional, verbal, physical and sexual violence against women.


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2.4 Broader impacts on development and society
Failure to recognise, support and share the substantial amount of care work done by
women and girls has a negative knock-on effect on other social and developmental
goals.

Poverty reduction
For the reasons given above and more besides, the gendered distribution of unpaid
care work obstructs progress towards gender equality. This has an impact far beyond
the personal, given the positive correlation between poverty reduction, economic
growth
25
and increased gender equality. Evidence clearly shows that poverty reduction
measures are less effective when women are left behind and where gender inequality
is high.
26


Children’s health and education
When women are weighed down with unpaid care work, their time and income poverty
also impacts on their family, including the health and education of their children – as
they may not be able to afford the time or out-of-pocket costs of schooling or
healthcare. Lack of public services and social grants to support unpaid care work also
affects the quality of care that the poorest women are able to provide to their children,
despite their constant efforts. This perpetuates the transmission of poverty and
disadvantage to the next generation, with girls more likely to be removed from school
when money is tight.
27


Productivity and economic growth
Time spent by women on unpaid care work can lead to reduced productivity.
According to the IMF, there is “ample evidence that when women are able to develop
their full labour market potential, there can be significant macroeconomic gains”.
28

However, unpaid care work represents a major obstacle to women’s greater
participation in the workforce. Recent census data from India shows that 45 percent of
working age women – around 160 million women - are not in the workplace and are
confined solely to domestic duties.
29
Furthermore, economic growth strategies that aim
to harness women’s potential and productivity by promoting their greater participation
in employment, higher education or vocational training are doomed to failure if they
ignore the barriers created by unpaid care work – or the impact on women’s health and
wellbeing if they have to combine paid and unpaid work without adequate support.
Many women will be unable to, for example, take employment opportunities if they do
not have access to affordable childcare.

In contrast, measures that explicitly seek to reduce and redistribute women’s unpaid
work can have major positive effects: studies show that reducing the household time
burdens on women could increase agricultural labour productivity by 15 percent and
capital productivity by as much as 44 percent in some countries.
30
Investments in areas
such as water, electricity and transport infrastructure would serve not only to reduce
women’s unpaid working hours, but would also have positive effects on the production
of goods and services in the subsistence economy and the market economy.


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Bad policy decisions
Failure to recognise the importance and extent of unpaid care can also cause policy-
makers to misunderstand the actual economic contributions of men and women, as
well as to overlook time poverty
31
and the constraints it imposes. This can lead to
misinformed policy decisions with bad outcomes, especially for the poorest women.
32

For example, the gaps created by cutting or privatising services such as water,
healthcare, or childcare are usually filled by women’s unpaid labour: walking further to
a free water point, or cutting back on paid work hours to take care of children and ill
relatives, leaving the household more time-stressed and income-poor. Such policies
therefore often have severe hidden or unrecognised costs – in terms of money, time
and labour for poor households, and knock-on effects on the economy as a whole.

Environmental sustainability
Unpaid care work is also strongly relevant to environmental and natural resource
sustainability, given that women have a large role in natural resource/land use and
stewardship, and that environmental degradation such as desertification and
deforestation has a major impact on women’s unpaid care work – for example giving
them longer journeys to collect water or fuel.
33
Environmental degradation and changes
in ecosystems and food systems also seriously challenges women’s ability to feed and
sustain their families and increases the time they have to spend to do so.
34



3. The post-2015 development agenda: a
unique opportunity
The post-2015 development agenda is a major opportunity to provide long overdue
recognition to unpaid care work, showing that the international community
acknowledges the extent and value of unpaid care work in all societies. Hence,
alongside many other State and non-State actors, GADN considers it essential to
include a target on reducing and redistributing women’s unpaid care work under a
gender equality goal in the post-2015 framework.

3.1 The benefits of including unpaid care
The benefits of progress towards such a goal could be substantial; both on achieving
gender equality and in meeting other development goals, by freeing up women’s time
and boosting their socio-economic status, access to decent work, human rights
enjoyment and political participation. It would represent a hugely valuable first step
towards the profound changes necessary in how our societies view, value, provide and
support care.

a) Empowering women through extra time, income and opportunities
 Increasing opportunities for decent work – boosting their income and economic
empowerment
 Ensuring domestic responsibilities do not interfere with women and girls’ right to
education

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 Increasing their ability to participate in politics and public affairs – by easing the
practical and social barriers to engagement

b) Upholding women’s dignity, autonomy and human rights
 Reducing their vulnerability to violence
 Improving their mental and physical health
 Tackling damaging and constraining gender stereotypes

c) Boosting overall progress towards other development goals and targets,
including:
 Making progress towards the poverty goal/targets more effective and inclusive,
ensuring the poorest women are not left behind
 Enabling better more equal progress towards targets on education, health,
political participation, hunger, energy, decent work, and environmental
sustainability.

3.2 Suggested target

The Final Outcome Document of the Open Working Group (OWG) on Sustainable
Development Goals includes a target (target 5.4) on unpaid care work under Proposed
Goal 5: ‘Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls’.
35
The wording has
evolved from previous drafts of the goals and targets produced by the OWG.

Target 5.4 on unpaid care

Wording of unpaid care target in OWG Final Outcome Document of 19 July 2014:
“recognize and value unpaid care and domestic work through the provision of
public services, infrastructure and social protection policies, and the promotion of
shared responsibility within the household and the family as nationally
appropriate”
36


Wording of unpaid care target in OWG zero draft of 30 June 2014:
“recognize and redistribute unpaid care and domestic work through shared
responsibility within the family and the provision of appropriate public services”
37



GADN is delighted that the Final Outcome Document includes a target on unpaid
care. At this point in time, the inclusion of unpaid care in the post-2015
framework would represent substantial ‘recognition’ of unpaid care work in
itself, and have significant positive knock-on effects. While we suggest some
improvements to the wording below, we emphasize that the main objective is to
retain the target under a gender goal.





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GADN comments on the proposed target wording:

 The recognition of the importance of public services, infrastructure and social
protection is very welcome, as these are all important avenues for reducing and
redistributing unpaid care work.
 The target would ideally specify the need to ‘reduce’ and ‘redistribute’ unpaid
care work (as in previous OWG drafts), rather than just ‘recognize and value’.
Reduction is tangible and measurable, and decreasing the drudgery and time
burden of unpaid care work for poor women is very achievable and potentially
transformative (see box below). In addition, redistribution of unpaid care work –
through the promotion of shared responsibility within the household but much
more besides - is a core element in promoting gender equality.
 It would be preferable to spell out men and women rather than referring only to
the family or household – as shared responsibility only by women and girls in
the household would not have the positive effects sought.
 The clause ‘as nationally appropriate’ is regrettable, given that goals and
targets are intended to be universal; and such a clause does not appear in
other targets. Besides, appropriate benchmarks and indicators will be set at the
national level.
 The target (and all other targets under the gender goal) should be time-bound,
as it is just as achievable, measurable and important as targets under other
goals in the framework.

GADN suggested wording for a target on unpaid care

by 2030, recognize, reduce and redistribute unpaid domestic and care work
through the provision of public services, infrastructure and social
protection, and the promotion of shared responsibility between men and
women.

Even if the final target does not include the wording of ‘reduce’ and ‘redistribute’, or
specify the crucial channels of public services, infrastructure and social protection,
these will be important modes of implementation, in order to reach any target related to
unpaid care work. As such, these can be partly captured under indicators as outlined in
the next section.

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Reduction, Redistribution and Recognition

Reduction implies that the time burden and drudgery of unpaid care work,
especially for poor women, should be reduced, for example through technology
and efficiency measures. It does not imply that the amount of care provided is
reduced; it is vital that the level and quality of care provided is at least maintained.

Redistribution implies from women to men, but also better distribution between
households, markets, the State and civil society – guided by the goal to tackle
inequalities and ensure greater enjoyment of human rights, while protecting and
prioritizing the quality of care provided.

Recognition implies that unpaid care work should be valued as a crucial social
and economic good, including by measuring it and counting it as a form of work;
and that those who provide unpaid care work should be supported, valued and
treated as rights-holders.
38


3.3 Indicators
As the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network has emphasized, SDG
indicators have a dual purpose: as a management tool to help countries develop
implementation and monitoring strategies, and as a tool to measure progress and
ensure accountability.
39
There are several indicators that could be effective in these
regards for unpaid care. Many could be included as indicators under the specific target
on unpaid care work; some can be included/mainstreamed under other areas of the
framework. Much of the necessary data is already collected, or could be collected
under existing mechanisms.

The relevant data to measure progress on the indicators will be collected primarily by
national (and sub-national) authorities, with involvement and cooperation from
international agencies and civil society organizations.
40
Many indicators relevant to
unpaid care work are already included among the UN Statistics Division’s Minimum Set
of Gender Indicators,
41
and some are already routinely collected by States, for example
in household surveys. However, there are certainly gaps in the existing data on
unpaid care work and this is something that the post-2015 framework will hopefully
begin to redress.

Regular time use-surveys are a necessary tool to make visible the extent of unpaid
care work. The data collected can also be used to capture and analyse gender roles,
explain gender disparities in work and education, and make visible the necessity of
particular policy measures such as investment in energy or infrastructure.
42

Approximately 70 countries have conducted time-use surveys, including many
developing countries, but further investment is needed to conduct them regularly in
every country and improve their quality and disaggregation.
43
As UN Women and
others have argued, efforts should also be made to develop additional perception

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indicators to measure social norms related to gender equality, women’s empowerment
and the human rights of women and girls.
44
The proposals for indicators on unpaid care
work made by UN Women
45
are well-founded and feasible for all countries; most of the
following are therefore derived from their proposals. Where an indicator was suggested
by a party other than UN Women, this has been noted in an endnote.

Suggested indicators

Measuring women’s time burdens:
Progress under these indicators can be measured by well-designed time-use surveys.
 Average weekly number of hours spent on unpaid domestic and care work, by
sex.
 The female to male ratio of total workload (both paid and unpaid work);
46

or Average number of hours spent on paid and unpaid work combined (total
work burden), by sex.
47

 Average time spent on fuel-wood collection, by sex.

Access to public services and care services
 Average time spent on water collection (including waiting time at public supply
points), by sex.
 Proportion of households within 15 minutes of nearest water source.
 Proportion of children under primary school age in organized childcare.

Investments in energy and domestic technologies (these could also be integrated
as indicators under Proposed Goal 7
48
):
Data on these indicators are routinely collected in household surveys.
 Percentage of households with fuel-efficient stoves/using solid cooking fuels, by
income and rural/urban location.
 Percentage of households with access to electricity, by urban/rural location.

3.4 Taking unpaid care work into account in other goals and
targets

Unpaid care work is also relevant to many of the other areas of the post-2015 goals.
Firstly, it will be a potential barrier to achieving some goals and targets. For example,
women are often unable to benefit equally from poverty reduction measures,
education, decent work initiatives, or social protection programmes that fail to take into
account unpaid care duties. Measures to increase girls’ school completion rates, for
example, will be less successful if they ignore girls’ time-consuming responsibilities at
home: among 13- to 24-year-olds in Guatemala, 33 percent of girls said household
chores was the main reason for not being enrolled in school.
49


Secondly, targets under other goals may impact positively or negatively on the amount,
intensity and distribution of unpaid care work. For example, targets on increasing
access to quality health and education services and improving energy and water
infrastructure will reduce time spent on unpaid care and so are likely to be particularly

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important in promoting gender equality. In contrast, ill-designed measures towards
otherwise desirable goals could inadvertently increase women’s work. For example:
public works programmes which fail to provide on-site childcare can exclude women or
increase women’s time poverty
50
; measures to ensure registration of all newborn
children increase women’s work if they rely on families bringing infants to central
registration centres far from the rural areas where many of the poorest people live.
51


Below we include suggestions for possible indicators/benchmarks under other goals
and targets that could have positive effects on reducing and redistributing women’s
unpaid care work.
52
The Goals included below are those proposed in the final outcome
document of the Open Working Group.
53
Even where not explicitly specified, progress
under all these targets should be measured and disaggregated by sex, rural/urban
location and income level.

Poverty (Goal 1)
 Percentage of population covered by comprehensive social protection floor
54


Health (Goal 3)
 Percentage of population within x distance of an affordable healthcare service
provider
 Ratio of health professionals to population
55

 Numbers of people providing full-time unpaid care for a sick person in the home
or community (disaggregated by income level and urban/rural location)
 Unmet need for family planning

Education (Goal 4)
 Enrolment in technical and vocational education and training programmes as a
percentage of the total enrolment in upper secondary education, by sex
 Enrolment/completion rates in primary and secondary schools, by sex, income
level and rural/urban location
56


Water and Sanitation (Goal 6)
 Percentage of population using an improved drinking water source with a total
collection roundtrip time of 30 minutes or less, including waiting time
57


Employment and decent work (Goal 8)
 Gender wage gap
 Unemployment rate, by sex and age
 Informal employment as a share of non-agricultural employment, by sex
 Proportion of low pay workers, by sex and age.

Financing for development/means of implementation (Goal 17)
 Share of tax and budget laws and policies subject to periodic, participatory
gender equality analyses, and public expenditure tracking, especially as they
impact poor women
 Progressivity of tax regime
58



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4. Achieving change post-2015 and beyond
In order to make meaningful progress towards the target and under the indicators listed
above, concerted policy and legislative efforts will be necessary from States and
development partners. Obviously, each country has its own challenges and context, so
there are a variety of possible approaches – but the urgency of action is universal. The
following is a summary of some of the most important and effective approaches, taken
from experience across different contexts - developed/developing and North/South.
These can be considered part of the ‘means of implementation’ for the Sustainable
Development Goals, but are also necessary beyond the confines of the post-2015
process and regardless of the final goals and targets.

4.1 Investment in technology and infrastructure
Care is essential to every household, community and society; but in many cases it can
be performed in less time and with less drudgery through better support. This frees up
women’s time and boosts their opportunities, capabilities and rights enjoyment; and
also improves the quality of care that is provided, benefitting all members of the
household and of society.
a) Investment in and dissemination of affordable domestic technologies such as grain
grinders and fuel-efficient stoves could have a major impact on freeing women’s
time. A study in the DRC showed that women with traditional stoves worked as
much as 52 hours per week more than would be necessary with fuel-efficient
stoves.
59

b) Investment in infrastructure (piped water, wells, energy networks, roads), especially
in disadvantaged areas. In rural South Africa, investments in electricity networks
raised women’s employment by almost 10 percentage points in five years, by
freeing up time from domestic work; while in rural Guatemala and Pakistan, the
expansion of rural road networks has had a strong impact on female mobility and
schooling. Also in South Africa, women who must fetch water and fuel spend one-
quarter less time in paid employment than those women who do not.

4.2 Public services and care services
Public services: affordable, accessible and high-quality public services – including
health and education - play a major role in supporting unpaid care work and reducing
the time and drudgery it entails. The investment of greater resources in these sectors,
in particular in disadvantaged areas, would have a major positive impact. For example,
investment in more hospital beds, trained health professionals and palliative care
facilities can prevent care for the sick or dying simply being shifted onto households at
their own expense. Measures to make existing public services more sensitive to
unpaid care can also be taken, for example: free school meal programmes; extended
school day programmes; or household/community care capacity assessments to guide
hospital discharge decisions.

Care services: high-quality child care and elder care should be accessible and
affordable for all, in order to ease the workload of families. In most contexts, this will

Unpaid care: A priority for the post-2015 development goals and beyond www.gadnetwork.org
15
entail a mixture of State provision with State subsidization and regulation of care
provided by other actors (e.g. community organisations, private sector). World Bank
research shows that access to subsidized child and elderly care is associated with
increases in the number of hours of paid work women are able do. In developing
countries, it also boosts participation of female workers in formal employment. In
contrast, lack of childcare was shown to push mothers from formal into informal
employment in Botswana, Guatemala, Mexico and Vietnam.
60


In 2007 when the Government of Mexico established a childcare programme for
women workers, 72 percent of the women beneficiaries did not work due to lack of
childcare. As a result of the childcare provided, the percentage of unemployed women
beneficiaries decreased by 40 percent, and their incomes increased by 35 percent.
61


In Kenya reducing the price of childcare significantly increases mothers’ wage
employment and older girls’ schooling.
62


4.3 Changing social norms
Entrenched social norms and discriminatory gender stereotypes – that label men as
breadwinners and women as carers and nurturers whose place is in the home - are at
the root of women’s disproportionate burden of unpaid care work. Actively tackling
these social norms is therefore key to redistribution of care work within households and
society.
63


a) Education of women, girls, men and boys to recognize the value of care work, and
tackle gender stereotypes – including through school curricula.

b) Encouraging men and boys to provide care, including by working with faith and
other traditional leaders.

The Africare ‘male empowerment’ project in Zimbabwe aimed to break traditional
barriers that prevented men from caring for people living with HIV/AIDS. It focused on
expanding traditional notions of masculinity to include caring and supportive behaviour,
through enlisting traditional leaders and also providing medical supplies.
64


c) Incentives/legislation to encourage employers to offer flexible work time and
adequate family leave for men and women. Ultimately the goal would be to work
towards a right to paid parental leave for all women and men, and incentivizing the
more equal sharing of childcare through these policies, as in Iceland for example.
65

These measures are certainly immediately feasible in developed countries, and could
be an important way for those countries to make progress towards the target.

4.4 Representation
Reducing the exclusion of unpaid carers from public life is a critical challenge. To this
end, it is necessary to:


Unpaid care: A priority for the post-2015 development goals and beyond www.gadnetwork.org
16
a) Tackle the practical constraints to the participation of unpaid caregivers (particularly
those living in poverty) in community, local and national decision-making: for example
by providing childcare and transport.
66


b) Build unpaid care workers’ capacity and agency to participate in decision-making
and policy-making – particularly with regards to land, natural resources, water, energy,
social protection and decent work.

In the governance structure of Colombia’s cash transfer programme Familias en
Acción/Juntos, women are elected as community facilitators (madres líderes or
presidentas) to serve as links between the programme and beneficiaries, giving women
an opportunity to participate and providing a gender-safe environment for women
beneficiaries.
67


In Nigeria, women’s groups are mobilising to call for the implementation of the
integrated early childhood development policy that would provide public childcare
services for children from 0-5 years old across the country.
68


c) Challenge the social norms that reinforce the belief of women carers and others that
they do not have a valid role in formal politics.

The Self Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) launched its Women, Work and
Water Campaign in Gujarat, India in 1995. The campaign included awareness-raising,
training, and the establishment of local water users’ groups (with a majority of women)
for the management of community water sources. Initially greeted with scepticism by
many women and hostility from many men for intruding on ‘male territory’, after ten
years the campaign involved 30,000 women across 500 villages. Women have
demonstrated their ability to occupy ‘public’ space and have changed men’s
perceptions of women’s role.
69


4.5 Using a care lens across all areas of public policy
Many areas of public policy impact on unpaid care work, and therefore it is essential
that these are not inadvertently undermining efforts in the areas above. To this end,
governments should use a care lens in all relevant areas of policy and legislation – a
few of which are outlined below. As always, the exact solutions vary according to
national context but these considerations are relevant to all countries.

Fiscal and economic policies are thought by many policy-makers to be disconnected
from unpaid care work, but in fact they are deeply relevant. Unpaid care is a vital
contribution to the economy; if unpaid care work were instead to be financed by the
public purse, it alone would represent over 3000 percent of the personal tax paid by all
earners in India.
70


There is a misplaced assumption that the supply of unpaid care work is infinite, elastic
and cost-free; it is none of these. Economic policy measures such as budget cuts or
privatisation of public services actively increase and intensify the work of women living

Unpaid care: A priority for the post-2015 development goals and beyond www.gadnetwork.org
17
in poverty, as they have no choice but to step in to replace the services that were cut or
they can no longer afford.
71
This can have severe hidden costs, in terms of increased
gender and income inequality, which in turn impacts negatively on social cohesion and
economic prosperity. Similarly, tax policies often implicitly reinforce gender stereotypes
about care, disincentivize women’s work, and place a disproportionate tax burden on
women who perform unpaid care work (for example through over-reliance on
consumption taxes and VAT).
72
A care lens can leads to better, more realistic, policy-
making, because it reveals the hidden costs and knock-on effects of certain policies.

Social protection policies should ensure that all people (including those not in work or
in the informal sector) have access to comprehensive social protection, recognising
that women should not be penalised as a result of interrupted work histories due to
care responsibilities. Policy-makers should take care that social protection programmes
are not based on and do not entrench stereotypical assumptions about women’s caring
role, or increase their unpaid care work by imposing actions that families (normally
mothers) must perform in return for benefits.
73


Decent work and employment legislation is another crucial area in which unpaid
care work must be taken into account. Priorities should include: ensuring decent work
is accessible to all (and decreasing the share of the workforce in informal, unprotected,
unregulated employment); recognising unpaid care as work, to be counted and
measured appropriately (for example in labour statistics and national accounts)
74
;
implementing women’s right to paid maternity leave and to request flexible working
arrangements; ensuring that women are not concentrated in or pushed into the
informal sector because of unpaid care responsibilities.


5. Conclusion
Ultimately, the aim for 2015, 2030 and beyond is to create societies in which unpaid
care work is recognised and valued as a crucial social and economic good. In such a
society unpaid care work would be shared more equally between women and men; the
State would have responsibility for ensuring high-quality care is accessible to all,
including the poorest people in society; sufficient investment would be made in
supporting unpaid care and easing its time burden through services, infrastructure and
domestic technology; and people who perform unpaid care work would have greater
choices, opportunities, and voice to participate in politics, the workplace, social and
cultural life.

The inclusion of a target on unpaid care work in the post-2015 agenda would represent
an important symbolic and practical step towards this aim, with widely-shared benefits.
Progress towards recognising, reducing and redistributing women’s unpaid care work
should improve the well-being of care-givers and care-receivers, as well as having a
positive impact on gender equality, sustainable development, poverty reduction, and
economic growth.


Unpaid care: A priority for the post-2015 development goals and beyond www.gadnetwork.org
18
Unpaid care in the work of GADN members and associates

ActionAid’s unpaid care work programme is currently underway in 10 countries
across Asia and Africa including India, Nigeria, Uganda, Nepal and Bangladesh.
75


Oxfam’s Rapid Care Analysis has been carried out in 20 programmes across 11
countries in Asia, Africa, Latin America, Middle East and the UK, leading to
advocacy proposals for increased water and fuel infrastructure, communications to
change norms as well as health, childcare and social services.
76


VSO have been working for many years to improve the recognition of unpaid
volunteers in the community and increase the support and resources they receive.
In particular, they have focused on home- and community-based carers who
provide healthcare for people living with HIV/AIDS.
77


The Institute for Development Studies is conducting a three-year project
examining why unpaid care work is given little attention in development policy and
programming
78
, including an analysis of social protection and early childhood
development programmes across many countries and how they take account of
unpaid care work.
79
Their country study on Nepal shows that a grassroots
movement of 41,000 rural women is organizing to demanding childcare services
and specific support to women’s unpaid care work through social security
provisions.
80


The United Nations Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights
submitted a report to the General Assembly in October 2013 presenting the
unequal distribution of unpaid care work as a major human rights issue,
highlighting its impact on poverty, gender inequality and women’s rights to work,
education and political participation, among others.
81
The report was developed
after significant consultation with and input from GADN members.



1
See: Commission on the Status of Women, 2014 (58
th
session), Challenges and achievements in the
implementation of the Millennium Development Goals for women and girls: agreed conclusions,
E/CN.6/2014/L.7 – in particular point A. (gg); Sepúlveda Carmona, M., 2013, Report of the Special
Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights: unpaid care work, poverty and women’s human rights,
UN Doc A/68/293; UN Women, 2013, A Transformative Stand-Alone Goal on Achieving Gender Equality,
Women’s Rights and Women’s Empowerment: Imperatives and Key Components; UN Women and
ECLAC, 2013, Report of the Expert Group Meeting on Structural and Policy Constraints in Achieving the
MDGs for Women and Girls, available at
http://www.unwomen.org/~/media/Headquarters/Attachments/Sections/CSW/58/CSW58-2013-EGM-
Report-en.pdf. Various States have also included a target on unpaid care work in their proposals for the
post-2015 agenda. In the ‘zero draft’ proposed goals and targets issued following the 11
th
session of the
Open Working Group on Sustainable Development Goals, a target on unpaid care work was included
(point 5.6. http://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/focussdgs.html

Unpaid care: A priority for the post-2015 development goals and beyond www.gadnetwork.org
19

2
See endnote 1. For States, also see e.g. the ‘Encyclopedia Groupinica: A Compilation of Goals and
Targets Suggestions from OWG-10. Available at
http://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/content/documents/3698EncyclopediaGroupinica.pdf
3
The calculations vary from 15-63% depending on country and method. See for example: Budlender, D.,
2010, ‘What Do Time Use Studies Tell us about Unpaid Care Work? Evidence from Seven Countries’, in
Time Use Studies and Unpaid Care Work, ed. Budlender, UNRISD; Hoenig S. A. and Page, A.R.E, 2012,
Counting on Care Work in Australia, Report prepared by AECgroup Limited for economic Security4women,
Australia; Charmes, J. and J. Unni (2004), “Measurement of work”, in G. Standing and M. Chen eds.,
Reconceptualising Work, International Labour Organization.
4
See Razavi, S., 2007, The Political and Social Economy of Care in a Development Context: Conceptual
Issues, Research Questions and Policy Options, UNRISD
5
For further information on the importance of community volunteers to the post-2015 agenda, see VSO,
2014, Volunteerism and the Post-2015 Agenda, VSO International. Available at
http://www.vsointernational.org/Images/Volunteerism-and-the-post-2015-agenda_tcm76-41498.pdf
6
See for example Budlender, D., 2010, Time Use Studies and Unpaid Care Work, New York, Routledge;
ActionAid, 2012, Making Care Visible: women’s unpaid care work in Nepal, Nigeria, Uganda and Kenya.
Available at www.actionaid.org/unpaidcarework.
7
World Bank, 2012, Gender Equality and Development, World Development Report 2012, Ch. 5
8
Duflo, E., 2012, ‘Women Empowerment and Economic Development’, Journal of Economic Literature,
50(4), 1052
9
See Valodia, I. and R. Devey, 2005, ‘Gender, Employment and Time Use: Some Issues in South Africa’.
Paper prepared for the Conference on Unpaid Work, Poverty and the Millennium Development Goals,
Bureau for Development Policy, UNDP and Levy Economics Institute, October 2005. Available at
http://www.levyinstitute.org/undp-levy-conference/papers/paper_Valodia.pdf
10
See Razavi, 2007, op cit.
11
See Williams, F., 2014, 'Making Connections across the Transnational Political Economy of Care' in B.
Anderson and I. Shutes (eds.) Care and Migrant Labour: Theory, Policy and Politics, Palgrave Macmillan
12
Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, 1995. Available at
http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/beijing/pdf/BDPfA%20E.pdf. See in particular Strategic Objectives A4,
F6 and H3.
13
See Sepúlveda Carmona, M., 2013, Report of the Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human
rights: unpaid care work, poverty and women’s human rights, UN Doc A/68/293;
14
See e.g. Budlender, D., 2008, ‘The Statistical Evidence on Care and Non-Care Work Across Six
Countries’, UNRISD (infographics based on these statistics available at http://growsellthrive.org/our-
work/care) and ActionAid, 2012, op. cit.
15
Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), 2008, Women’s Contribution to
Equality in Latin America and the Caribbean, 73
16
Makina, A., 2009, ‘Caring for people with HIV: States policies and their dependence on women’s unpaid
work’, Gender and Development, 17:2, 309-319.
17
ILO, 2009, Give Girls a Chance – Tackling Child Labour, a Key to the Future. Available at
http://www.ilo.org/ipecinfo/product/viewProduct.do?productId=10290
18
Bourque and Kega-Wa-Kega, 2011, Assessing the impact of fuel-efficient stoves in Minembwe, Oxfam
Germany
19
Akintola, A., 2008, ‘Towards equal sharing of care responsibilities: Learning from Africa’, paper prepared
for UNDAW Expert Meeting
20
Falth A. and M. Blackden, 2009, Unpaid Care Work: UNDP Policy Brief, UNDP

Unpaid care: A priority for the post-2015 development goals and beyond www.gadnetwork.org
20

21
UNAIDS, UNFPA & UNIFEM, 2004, Women and HIV/AIDS: Confronting the Crisis.
22
Akintola, 2008, op cit. p.3
23
Makina, A., 2009, op cit.
24
Esplen E., 2009, BRIDGE Gender and Care Overview Report, Institute of Development Studies;
European Women’s Lobby, 2012, The Price of Austerity – the impact on women’s rights and gender
equality in Europe.
25
See e.g. Kabeer, N. and L. Natali, 2013, Gender Equality and Economic Growth: Is there a win-win? IDS
Working Paper 2013: 417
26
See World Bank, 2012, op cit.; UN System Task Team on the Post-2015 UN Development Agenda,
2012,
Realising the Future We Want for All: Report to the Secretary General, New York
27
ILO, 2009, op cit.
28
IMF, 2013, Women Work and the Economy: Macroeconomic Gains from Gender Equity
29
Varma, S., 2014, ’16 crore jobless women form India’s ‘Great Invisible Force’, Times of India, 3 July
2014. http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/16-crore-jobless-women-form-Indias-Great-Invisible-
Force/articleshow/37669859.cms
30
OECD, 2008, Gender and Sustainable Development: Maximising the Economic, Social and
Environmental Role of Women, 18-19
31
See Antonopoulos, R., A. Zacharias and T. Masterson, 2012, Uncovering the Hidden Poor: The
Importance of Time Deficits, Levy Economics Institute; Gammage, S., 2010, ‘Time Pressed and Time
Poor: Unpaid Household Work in Guatemala’, Feminist Economics 16:3 79-112
32
See e.g. Elson, D., 2006, Budgeting for Women’s Rights: Monitoring Government Budgets for
Compliance with CEDAW, UNIFEM
33
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), 2010, Gender Dimensions of
Agricultural and Rural Employment: differentiated pathways out of poverty, 31
34
See DAWN, 2014, DAWN’s contribution on social equity, gender equality and women’s human rights: 8
th

session of the OWG on Sustainable Development Goals. Available at http://www.dawnnet.org/feminist-
resources/sites/default/files/articles/owg_8_-_dawn_-_contribution_on_gender_equity-final.pdf; genanet
(2013), Sustainable Economy and Green Growth: Who Cares? Workshop report. Available at
http://www.genanet.de/care-eco.html?&L=1
35
http://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/content/documents/4518outcomedocument.pdf
36
http://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/content/documents/4518outcomedocument.pdf
37
http://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/content/documents/4044zerodraft.pdf
38
The recognise, reduce, redistribute formula was originally introduced by Professor Diane Elson.
39
See UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network (UNSDSN), 2014, Indicators for Sustainable
Development Goals, Working Draft 22 May 2014, 5. Available at http://unsdsn.org/wp-
content/uploads/2014/05/140522-SDSN-Indicator-Report.pdf
40
Ibid.
41
http://genderstats.org/
42
See Ferrant, G., 2014, Time use as a transformative indicator for gender equality in the post-2015
agenda, OECD Development Centre. Available at
http://www.oecd.org/dev/poverty/Time%20use%20_final_2014.pdf
43
See UN Statistics Division, Improving Measurement of Paid and Unpaid Work:
http://unstats.un.org/unsd/methods/timeuse/icatus/icatus_1.htm
44
UN Women, 2014, Targets and indicators for Post-2015 stand-alone goal and mainstreaming, May 2014
45
Ibid.

Unpaid care: A priority for the post-2015 development goals and beyond www.gadnetwork.org
21

46
Harper, C., K. Nowacka, H. Adler, G. Ferrant, 2014, Measuing women’s empowerment and social
transformation in the post-2015 agenda, OECD Development Centre and Overseas Development Institute
47
See UNSDSN 2014, op cit. p.11. This is already included among the UN Statistics Division’s Minimum
Set of Gender Indicators.
48
‘Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable, and modern energy for all’: Final Outcome Document
of the Open Working Group 21.7.14. http://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/focussdgs.html
49
World Bank, 2012, op cit.
50
FAO and Asian Development Bank, 2013, Gender Equality and Food Security: Women’s Empowerment
as a Tool Against Hunger, 56-57
51
See UNICEF, 2013, Every Child’s Birth Right: Inequities and trends in birth registration, 37
52
If these are not included under these targets they may need to be included under the gender goal.
53
Final Outcome Document of the Open Working Group on Sustainable Development Goals 21.7.14.
http://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/focussdgs.html
54
See for example Women’s Major Group 2014 (ibid), and UNSDSN 2014, op cit.p.9
55
See UNSDSN 2014, op cit p.12
56
See UNSDSN 2014, op cit p.11
57
UN Women 2014, op cit.
58
Both targets here adapted from Center for Economic and Social Rights and Christian Aid, 2014, A Post-
2015 Fiscal Revolution: Human Rights Policy Brief. Available at
http://www.cesr.org/downloads/fiscal.revolution.pdf
59
Bourque and Kega-Wa-Kega, 2011, op cit.
60
World Bank 2012, op cit. Ch. 5
61
Falth and Blackden, 2009, op cit.
62
World Bank, 2001 Engendering Development – Through Gender Equality in Rights, Resources and
Voice, 24
63
See Harper, Nowacka et al, 2014, op cit.
64
Akintola, 2008, op cit.
65
IMF, 2013, Women Work and the Economy: Macroeconomic Gains from Gender Equity
66
Sepulveda Carmona M., 2013, Report of Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights:
participation of people living in poverty, A/HRC/23/36
67
Holmes, R., N. Jones, R. Vargas and F. Soares, 2010, “Cash Transfers and Gendered Risks and
Vulnerabilities: Lessons from Latin America,” International Policy Centre for Inclusive Growth Research
Brief, No. 16, 3.
68
Nesbitt-Ahmed, Z. and D. Chopra, 2013, Country Progress Report (2012-2013): Nigeria. IDS Evidence
Report No. 46, December 2013. Available at
http://opendocs.ids.ac.uk/opendocs/bitstream/handle/123456789/3276/bitstream?sequence=1
69
FAO and Asian Development Bank, 2013, op cit., 7
70
Budlender, D., 2010, Time Use Studies and Unpaid Care Work, UNRISD
71
See e.g. Fawcett Society, 2012, The Impact of Austerity on Women; Sandhu, K., M. Stephenson and J.
Harrison, 2013, Layers of Inequality: A Human Rights and Equality Impact Assessment of the Impact of
the Public Spending Cuts on BAME Women in Coventry, University of Warwick; European Women’s
Lobby, 2012, op cit.
72
See Elson, D., Budgeting for Women’s Rights: Monitoring Government Budgets for Compliance with
CEDAW, UNIFEM, May 2006, pp. 69-103; Grown, C. and I. Valodia, 2010, Taxation and Gender Equity,
Routledge; UNDP, 2010, Gender Equality and Poverty Reduction: Taxation, Issues Brief, No. 1, April
2010.

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22

73
See e.g. Care International, 2011, Do Conditional Cash Transfers Really Empower Women? A Look at
CCTs in Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador; Chopra, D., 2014, Towards Gender Equality with Care-sensitive social
protection. IDS Policy Briefing 49. Available at https://www.ids.ac.uk/publication/towards-gender-equality-
with-care-sensitive-social-protection
74
The 19
th
International Conference of Labour Statisticians in 2013 adopted a resolution to expand the
definition of work to include unpaid care work or ‘own-use production work’. See
http://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---dgreports/---
stat/documents/normativeinstrument/wcms_230304.pdf
75
ActionAid, 2012, op cit.; IDS, 2014, Interactions: Empowerment of Women and Girls – unpaid care work.
http://interactions.eldis.org/unpaid-care-work
76
http://growsellthrive.org/our-work/care, www.oxfam.org.uk/care
77
See http://www.vsointernational.org/what-we-do/health.asp and http://www.vsointernational.org/what-
we-do/advocacy/Post-2015.asp#0
78
https://www.ids.ac.uk/project/highlighting-the-invisibility-of-unpaid-care
79
Chopra, D. with A. Wanjiku Kelbert and P. Iyer, 2013, A Feminist Political Analysis of Public Policies
Related to Care: A Thematic Review. Available at
http://opendocs.ids.ac.uk/opendocs/bitstream/handle/123456789/2795/ER9%20Final%20Online.pdf;jsessi
onid=3EA24724F531A4BBE652F138B61DCC2E?sequence=1
80
Nesbitt-Ahmed and Chopra, 2014, op cit..
81
See http://www.empowerwomen.org/~/documents/2013/10/10/20/51/report-of-the-special-rapporteur-on-
extreme-poverty-and-human-rights#




We are grateful for comments from Rachel Moussie (ActionAid International), Daphne
Jayasinghe (ActionAid UK), Thalia Kidder (Oxfam GB), and Rachael Stokes ( VSO
International).

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Working groups
GADN brings together development
practitioners, experts and academics
working on thematic issues through
working groups. The post-2015 working
group’s aim is to improve the post-2015
framework so that it better promotes
women’s and girls’ rights and gender
equity.
Disclaimer
GADN produces a series of
background briefings for use by
our members and others. These
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