Expanding women's employment opportunities: Informal economy workers and the need for childcare

Childcare plays an essential role in supporting the employment of workers, and particularly women who continue to carry the primary responsibility for childcare in most societies. The lack of childcare support undermines women’s employment and steers women into the poorly paid, poorly protected informal economy. To address the gender dimension of informality, policy responses, programmes and projects need to recognize that providing childcare is a basic necessity for expanding women’s employment opportunities and enabling them to shift from informal economy activity to formal economic activity. The paper explores good practices on supporting the child care needs of informal workers through a series of well documented examples from Africa, Asia and Latin America.