Feminist political economy: how unpaid care work shapes economies and policy:#LOH304

Beyond Loans: Why Feminism Must Talk About Money, Care Work, and Policy.

When we hear women empowerment, we often hear about microloans, skills training, start a business bla bla bla...
Though, all is good. But we rarely hear of who is washing the plates, raising the children, and caring for the sick while she’s building that business?

Yes, I'm an educationist, a very complex researcher, and this discussion will require a high level understanding to be able to get the points, right because it’s a practical and eye-opening topic.

That is where Feminist Political Economy comes in. It asks one simple question,
whose work is powering the economy, and who is getting paid for it?

1. The Hidden Engine:
   Unpaid Care Work. In most homes in Nigeria and across Africa, women do thrice more unpaid work than men. Cooking, cleaning, fetching water, nursing children and the list continues...

Presently, the problem is that all these works are not counted in GDP. It’s not taxed. It’s not pensionable.
Yet without it, no one goes to school, no worker goes to the office, no business runs.

Economists call this the care economy. Feminist economists call it the foundation every other economy stands on.
If we ignore it in policy, we are building houses without foundations.

1. How Policy Can Change This.
   Empowerment is not just giving women money. It is also removing the barriers that drain their time and energy and some policy shifts can do this;

2. Investing in Public Care Infrastructure
   Community crèches, public healthcare, clean water in the community.
   For instance, when a market woman in Port Harcourt doesn’t have to carry her baby to the stall, she can trade for more hours and earn more.

3. Gender-Responsive Budgeting.
   Governments should ask questions like; will this road, this school, this health center help women and men equally?
   Rwanda in Africa does this well. 30% of their budget is tracked for gender impacts.

4. Paid Leave for All Parents.
   When only women take maternity leave, companies hesitate to hire women. When men also get paternity leave, care becomes shared, not women’s work.

I hope you are following the discussion well?

1. Why this matters for everyone.
   When women’s time is freed, entire communities get richer. Children do better in school. Businesses get more customers. Men also benefit because they get to be fathers, not just providers.

In this discussion, feminism here is not women vs men. It is efficiency vs waste. It’s wasteful to have half the population running on for hours of sleep because they did all the unpaid work.

In conclusion.
Count It, Fund It, Share It
If we are serious about gender equality, we must do these things:

1. Count unpaid care work in our national data.

2. Fund services that reduce it.

3. Share it fairly at home let everyone be a participant.

Note these.

Loans help but policy is what makes the loan sustainable.

A woman with capital and time and support will build more than a business. She will build a generation.

Let’s stop just empowering women to do more and let’s start empowering the systems to demand less from them.

How I’d use the knowledge for my gain.

1. For communities.
   Run workshops for women’s groups to teach financial literacy and how to value and negotiate domestic labor at home and in business.
2. For policy.
   Help local NGOs and govts design programs that don’t just empower women with loans, but also reduce their unpaid workload. Example is building community crèches so market women can trade without bringing babies to their shops.

A lot of gender inequality is normalized because that is just how it’s done. Data and stories can change that.