In this International Women’s Day episode we will discuss a very important topic for women informal workers: child care. As women are most often the primary responsible for looking after their children, without quality child care services, they either have to forgo paid work or are less productive because they have watch their children while trying to work. Child care is vital, especially in the poorest households, as the earnings of women informal workers often represent a large share of one family’s income.
In order to talk in more detail about child care policies for informal workers, we invite two especial guests this month.

Our first guest is Laura Addati. Laura is a Policy Specialist on Women’s Economic Empowerment at the ILO Office for the United Nations in New York. She has coordinated policy work on care work, maternity protection and work-family policies and has co-authored a number of ILO publications on these topics. Our second guest, returning to the podcast is Rachel Moussié. Rachel is Deputy Director of the Social Protection programme at WIEGO, where she also researches child care policies for informal workers.

Laura and Rachel are the co-authors of three policy briefs published by the ILO on child care policies for informal workers. The briefs are being launched this week. In this episode, we discussed with them more in-depth their third brief, on models of child care provision for informal workers.

Resources:

Quality childcare services for workers in the informal economy ILO-WIEGO Child Care Policy Brief nº1 https://www.wiego.org/publications/quality-childcare-services-workers-informal-economy

Labour and human rights frameworks promoting childcare for all workers. ILO-WIEGO Child Care Policy Brief nº2 https://www.wiego.org/publications/labour-and-human-rights-frameworks-promoting-childcare-all-workers

Extending childcare services to workers in the informal economy: Policy lessons from country experiences ILO-WIEGO Child Care Policy Brief nº3 https://www.wiego.org/publications/extending-childcare-services-workers-informal-economy-policy-lessons-country

Blog: Three new ways of at looking at the urgent need for quality childcare https://www.wiego.org/blog/three-new-ways-looking-urgent-need-quality-childcare

Beijing Declaration and Platform of Action https://www.unwomen.org/en/csw/csw64-2020

Care work and care jobs report: https://www.ilo.org/global/publications/books/WCMS_633135/lang--en/index.htm

ILO World Social Protection Report (2017-2019): https://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---dgreports/---dcomm/---publ/documents/publication/wcms_604882.pdf

ILO Policy Guidelines on the promotion of decent work for early childhood education personnel: https://www.ilo.org/sector/Resources/codes-of-practice-and-guidelines/WCMS_236528/lang--en/index.htm

ILO Centenary Declaration for the Future of Work https://www.ilo.org/global/about-the-ilo/mission-and-objectives/centenary-declaration/lang--en/index.htm

Domestic Workers Convention (C189): https://www.ilo.org/dyn/normlex/en/f?p=NORMLEXPUB:12100:0::NO::P12100_ILO_CODE:C189

Maternity Protection Convention (C183): https://www.ilo.org/dyn/normlex/en/f?p=NORMLEXPUB:12100:0::NO:12100:P12100_INSTRUMENT_ID:312328:NO

100 Years of Maternity Protection https://www.ilo.org/gender/Events/WCMS_715815/lang--en/index.htm

Transition from the Informal to the Formal Economy Recommendation (R204): https://www.ilo.org/dyn/normlex/en/f?p=NORMLEXPUB:12100:0::NO:12100:P12100_INSTRUMENT_ID:3243110:NO

Social Protection Floors Recommendation(R202): https://www.ilo.org/dyn/normlex/en/f?p=NORMLEXPUB:12100:0::NO:12100:P12100_INSTRUMENT_ID:3065524:NO

*Our theme music is Focus from AA Aalto (Creative Commons)