Addressing Unpaid Care to Close the Gender Gap in the Philippines and Zimbabwe: The Women’s Economic Empowerment and Care Project Report, 2016–2019

Overview

The Women’s Economic Empowerment and Care (WE-Care) programme has been working since 2013 to reignite progress on gender equality by addressing heavy and unequal unpaid care and domestic work (UCDW). In its goal to tackle this issue, the WE-Care partnership between Oxfam, Unilever and its Surf brand tested a comprehensive package of interventions to reduce and redistribute UCDW for women and girls. In just two years of implementing activities, around 79,000 people, mostly women and girls, have benefitted directly from water and laundry facilities. The programme has also engaged more than 1,300 policy makers and over 6,400 development actors and allies, as well as reached more than 34 million people through different online and media platforms.

The report celebrates the successes of the project and the communities the project has supported, and recognizes the unique contributions of its partners in the Philippines and Zimbabwe. It highlights challenges the project has faced and overcome and documents key lessons to guide future unpaid care programming.