Oxfam’s Food Security for Tanzania Farmers Programme: Guidelines for Achieving the Double Boon

The Oxfam Food Security for Tanzania Farmers programme (2012–15) aimed to increase food production and income, and improve the quality of life and food security for smallholder farmers, particularly women, in Tanzania. In Lushoto and Korogwe districts, it focused in particular on the domestic vegetable value chain (VVC), where rates of women’s participation are lower as compared to other agricultural crop production. In 2015–17, the project ‘Balancing unpaid care work and paid work: successes, challenges and lessons for women’s economic empowerment programmes and policies’ investigated how women’s economic empowerment (WEE) policies and programmes take unpaid care work into account, in order to enable women’s economic empowerment to be optimised. How does access to decent work play a key role in enabling women to achieve a ‘double boon’ through their participation in economically empowering work? This note discusses the main findings of the research in relation to the care-sensitivity of the Oxfam programme. It offers recommendations to Oxfam on how unpaid care work can be mainstreamed into its WEE programming, particularly by: helping to set up and maintain women’s groups to enable collective action; sharing its knowledge and experience to support other organisations in this kind of work; helping women lobby for increased access to markets; enabling women to campaign for better public services and infrastructure; helping families plan and redistribute the division of care tasks of household members; and encouraging families to send their children to school, discouraging the transfer of onerous care tasks that disrupt schooling.Department for International Development (DFID)William and Flora Hewlett FoundationInternational Development Research Centre (IDRC

Making Women Development Fund More Care-Responsive

The Women Development Fund (WDF) was established by the Government of Tanzania in 1992, with the objective to support the economic empowerment of women, and especially rural women. This note discusses the main findings of research in relation to the care-sensitivity of the WDF. The research was undertaken by the Institute of Development Studies and BRAC Research and Evaluation Unit, and implemented in Korogwe and Lushoto districts. The research hypothesis argues that taking unpaid care work into account in women’s economic empowerment (WEE) policies and programmes has the potential to significantly strengthen the empowering outcomes of women’s participation in paid work. This would therefore turn a ‘double burden’ into a ‘double boon’ – i.e. paid work that empowers women and provides more support for their unpaid care work responsibilities. The note provides a set of recommendations to the WDF on how to mainstream unpaid care work into women’s economic empowerment (WEE) programming, which include: providing a convenient platform for engaging with issues related to the reduction and redistribution of unpaid care work; exchanging lessons learned and best practices, and establishing synergies with other like-minded programmes active in Tanzania; lobbying for increasing the government’s investment in public services and better infrastructure; and expanding women’s access to markets and finance.Department for International Development (DFID)William and Flora Hewlett FoundationInternational Development Research Centre (IDRC

No Time to Rest: Women’s Lived Experiences of Balancing Paid Work and Unpaid Care Work

This report provides evidence on the lived experiences of women in low-income families, as they strive to balance their paid work and unpaid care work responsibilities. It presents the findings of a mixed-methods research project carried out in India, Nepal, Rwanda, and Tanzania during 2015–17. The findings of the research are clear and strong: that while women welcome the chance to earn income of almost any kind, their paid work options are few and poorly paid, and by no means contribute to their ‘economic empowerment’. Most women reported effects that can only be catalogued as physically and emotionally depleting. Further, an imbalance between paid work and unpaid care work was also found to have significant depleting effects on children, because of a reduction in the amount and quality of care they received, and their augmented roles as substitute providers of care and unpaid helpers at both home and their mother’s paid work. A key conclusion of this study is that this drudgery and resultant depletion faced by women and their families is neither an inevitable nor a necessary consequence of women’s engagement in paid work. The report analyses the extent to which existing women’s economic empowerment policies and programmes can achieve empowerment for women. It calls for changes in macroeconomic contexts and urgent prioritisation of removing the structural barriers to women’s empowerment.UK Department for International DevelopmentInternational Development Research CentreHewlett Foundatio

The UK's ‘Safe and Legal’ Humanitarian Routes:from Colonial Ties to Privatising Protection

In this article, the UK's ‘safe and legal (humanitarian) routes’ are evaluated by examining how they are positioned in the post-Brexit migration regime, and how these domestic provisions compare to those underwritten by international protections. The Hong Kong British Nationals (Overseas)—HK BN(O)s—and Ukraine visa schemes are an area of focus which, combined, account for the vast majority of those arriving in the UK for the purposes of humanitarian protections since Brexit. Despite being formally presented under the same banner, the schemes have significant differences in terms of eligibility criteria, costs, rights and entitlements. Moreover, on closer inspection, while they share an overarching policy vision informed by foreign policy priorities, these new provisions are underpinned by different genealogies and policy logics. While the HK BN(O) scheme is rooted in the tradition of ancestry visas and colonial entanglements and requires that potential beneficiaries pay for protections, the Ukrainian schemes are more closely aligned with recent refugee resettlement schemes and share with them the push towards greater involvement of private and community stakeholders in humanitarian protection

la creazione di valore attraverso la CSR il caso Cartiera Lucchese S.p.a

Il concetto di Responsabilità Sociale delle Imprese prevede l’integrazione, su base volontaria, da parte delle imprese di istanze sociali e ambientali nella prassi aziendal

'My Mother Does a Lot of Work': Women Balancing Paid and Unpaid Care Work in Tanzania

Tanzanian women spend more time overall than men on unpaid care work activities, and less on cash-earning work. This report presents the findings of research conducted in Tanzania as part of the ‘Balancing unpaid care work and paid work: successes, challenges and lessons for women’s economic empowerment programmes and policies’ research project. In particular, it reflects the voices and experiences of women and their household members who live across four rural districts in the Tanga region. The study finds that women in the region shoulder the majority of unpaid care work responsibilities, and struggle to balance these with paid work. Women therefore suffer the drudgery and physical and psychosocial stress of juggling paid work with unpaid work. Reasons for this include: the persistence of gender norms about who should do care work; the lack of public services essential to both the care and paid economies; and the low incomes earned by both women and men in these impoverished communities. The study highlights that intervention is needed to support a rebalancing of unpaid care with paid work. This could be achieved through: improved working conditions and pay; provision of childcare; public water or fuel services; gender-sensitive infrastructural development; and efforts to address gender-unequal social norms and values that proscribe the redistribution of care.Department for International Development (DFID)William and Flora Hewlett FoundationInternational Development Research Centre (IDRC

‘How Can It Be a Problem If You Need Them Both?’ Women Juggling Paid and Unpaid Care Work in Tanzania

This paper summarises the findings of mixed-methods research that was carried out in Tanzania as part of the ‘Balancing Unpaid Care Work and Paid Work: Successes, Challenges and Lessons for Women’s Economic Empowerment Programmes and Policies’ research project (2015–17). It reflects the voices and experiences of women and their household members participating in women’s economic empowerment (WEE) programmes across four sites in the rural districts of Korogwe and Lushoto in Tanga region. Participants in two WEE programmes are represented, namely the state-run Women Development Fund (WDF) and Oxfam’s Food Security for Tanzanian Farmers programme. The question addressed by the research was: ‘How can women’s economic empowerment (WEE) policies and programmes take unpaid care work into account in order to enable women’s economic empowerment to be optimised, shared across families and sustained across generations?’ This study and its findings clearly indicate that women shoulder the majority of unpaid work and struggle to balance this with paid work responsibilities. While some tasks are shared with other household members, there is no evidence to suggest that women are in a position to redistribute unpaid care work responsibilities to the state, the market or the community. Reasons for this appear to be mainly grounded in gender norms, the lack of public provision of services that are essential for facilitating care as well as paid work, and the low returns on women’s (and men’s) paid work. This study highlights that if no explicit action is undertaken to support a rebalance – whether that is through addressing working conditions, childcare arrangements, social norms or values or otherwise – patterns of unbalance will reproduce and perpetuate themselves, offering women valuable economic opportunities that help to improve living conditions and possibly their position within household or community settings, but never stretching quite far enough to reduce drudgery and the physical and psychosocial stress of juggling too many responsibilities.International Development Research Centre (IDRC)UK Department for International DevelopmentHewlett Foundatio

‘You Cannot Live Without Money’: Balancing Women’s Unpaid Care Work and Paid Work in Rwanda

This paper summarises the findings of mixed-methods research that was carried out in Rwanda as part of the ‘Balancing Unpaid Care Work and Paid Work: Successes, Challenges and Lessons for Women’s Economic Empowerment Programmes and Policies’ research project (2015–17). It reflects the voices and experiences of women and their household members participating in women’s economic empowerment (WEE) programmes across four sites in the rural districts of Musanze and Huye. Participants in two WEE programmes are represented, namely the state-run Vision 2020 Umurenge Programme (VUP), and ActionAid Rwanda’s Food Security and Economic Empowerment Programme. The question addressed by the research was: How can women’s economic empowerment (WEE) policies and programmes take unpaid care work into account in order to enable women’s economic empowerment to be optimised, shared across families and sustained across generations? This study and its findings indicate that women are the primary caregivers in families, although older children in particular and spouses to some extent also engage in some care tasks. There is little help with care from outside the nuclear family. Women’s paid work opportunities are more limited than men’s because of gender norms around certain types of work and because they have less time to find out about paid work opportunities due to their involvement in care work. Women may do more than one job, and much paid work is temporary, occasional and irregular, as well as seasonal. Women’s income from paid work is important; but, whether sole earnings or combined, it is not always enough to meet household needs. Balancing paid and unpaid work is a daunting task for the majority of women. Both care and paid work are often physically challenging and time consuming. Women have little time for leisure and personal use. Women who are the sole adult earners and carers for their families are struggling the most. Women who are relatively better off tend to live in families which have other adults also contributing to providing income and care.UK Department for International DevelopmentInternational Development Research Centre (IDRC)Hewlett Foundatio