CHILDCARE POLICIES AND GENDER EQUALITY: Exchange of Approaches and Experiences between Europe and Central Asia (ECA) and Latin America and the Caribbean (LCR) Regions.

Adequate childcare provisions are a key issue for development, not only for the well being of children, but also for their relation with women’s productive and reproductive time allocation possibilities. Childcare will thus impact: present and future human capital, social policy, technology development, labor markets’ interventions, and, of course, women. The two key challenges envisioned for childcare are:

1. The trade-offs between the availability and quality of childcare service and the needs of working women.

2. The pros and cons of the different modalities of childcare services; namely community and institutional approaches.

The workshop's goal was to contribute to a better understanding of the difficulties and challenges of developing childcare policies suitable for both the needs of women workers, especially those in low-income households, and the demands of better early childhood education to reduce future vulnerabilities in children.

It also seeks to advance in better monitoring and evaluation of the impact of current programs on women’s participation in the work force.

To advance in achieving this objective, a relevant exchange of experiences from policy-makers in different countries with different demands was promoted in order to bring together different perspectives and approaches; and debate on lessons learned and challenges ahead.

For the ECA countries, the debate is imperative because it allows them to assess the adverse impacts of the transition from an extensive and high-quality public childcare system to a new scheme were this model is no longer sustainable. For the LCR countries, on the other hand, childcare services are being designed and newly implemented for large shares of the population without previous access to them.

The World Bank Experience on Childcare and Gender Policy in Latin America and the Caribbean:

Drawing from the Bank experience in LCR, Sr. Education Economist, Emiliana Vegas, stressed the importance of the conceptual framework for Early Childhood Development (ECD) in Latin America from a two-prone approach: increasing female labor force participation, and providing the best childhood development policies.

On one hand, women’s labor force participation in Latin America and the Caribbean has recently increased from 25% to 34%. Yet, women continue to be the main caregivers. In part, due to these simultaneous responsibilities, women in most of LCR countries work fewer hours per week than men, and are more likely to have part-time jobs and trade income and work conditions for time flexibility. Thus, the region needs to expand the childcare facilities especially for the low-income families for women to be able to access better jobs and income.

On the other side, childcare policies should consider their role in early childhood brain development, as well as providing cognitive and social development, physical wellbeing, growth and infant nutrition. A World Bank study on childcare policies in LCR includes indicators such as health, maternal preventive care, water, and sanitation; showing the relation between overall growth, poverty and inequality with children’s development.

Some key questions were work and lessons from experience still need to be collected are:

1. How to avoid unintended consequences of childcare regulations on female labor opportunities and policies; and, how to stimulate female labor market participation? For example, a policy in place in Chile states that childcare should be provided by businesses or firms with more than 20 female employees. Due to this law, some Chilean companies hire less than 20 women to avoid the additional costs.

2. How to ensure high-quality childcare services? This is tightly linked to a monitoring system of the services, as well as monitoring of children’s development.

3. How to target scarce public resources to the most needy children, women and families?

4. How to improve coordination of childcare work across the agencies and sectors?

 

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