Webinar on Unpaid Care Work and Violence Against Women

1. Webinar on Unpaid Care Work and Violence Against Women Roselyn Nyatsanza 8 December 2016

2. Background of Oxfam's WE-Care Programme WE-Care is an initiative that started in 2014 with the main aim of building evidence on unpaid care, innovate on interventions and influence policy and practice on care as part of women’s empowerment. The work started with programme teams in a number of countries ( Colombia, Honduras, Ethiopia, Malawi, The Philippines, Uganda, Zimbabwe, Zambia ) gathering evidence, promoting learning and communications around unpaid care work. The ambition for the WE-Care initiative was to address the heavy and unequal care responsibilities that women face in all countries. The excessive responsibility is considered a “glass wall”, an invisible barrier limiting women’s time, mobility andambitions to participate in economic, political and social activities. This is especially acute for families and women living in poverty. WE-Care’s research demonstrated the need to improve our understanding of care as a key component for women’s empowerment, and to achieve Oxfam’s ambition to overcome inequality and vulnerability. The WE-Care approach was intended to be embedded within existing Oxfam programs as complementary to the program’s objectives. Two main tools were used- local participatory research (The Rapid Care Analysis) and a quantitative survey (the Household Care Survey). These tools enabled better understanding of a context specific provision of care. The analysis contributed to better program assessments, planning and design of activities/interventions for women and also contributing to women's empowerment.

3. Objectives and Indicators of Success The WE-Care initiative’s ambition aims to bring about the following changes in care work (also known as the four ‘Rs’): • Increase the Recognition of care (e.g. care considered work, and men's and women's roles). • Reduce the drudgery of care work (e.g. total hours of care work of poor families go down, meaning women and men can choose to spend more time on other activities/work or other forms of care like spending time with their children). • Redistribute responsibility for care more equitably between women and men and between households and the state/employers. (e.g. Women do fewer hours, men do more. Government/employers increase access to care services and infrastructure such as childcare or water). • Facilitate the Representation of carers in decision-making (with households/government/communities). Oxfam's ambition is that this initiative will facilitate improving the design and impact of selected programme interventions to address care work. Working with others, Oxfam will use programme evidence and experience to influence governments, donors, private sector actors and Oxfam staff and partners in order to recognize and address care as a development issue.

4. WE-Care Phase 2 We have learnt that reducing the nature and extent of women’s unpaid care work is essential to achieving women’s economic empowerment. This assertion, once accepted only by women’s rights activists, is now recognized by donors, policy makers, and practitioners and there is growing interest in addressing unpaid care within development policy and programming. But decision makers often don’t understand enough about how unpaid care impacts on economic policy to design - or to justify funding for appropriate interventions. And the leaders of women’s organizations and civil society don’t have the evidence, strategies or resources they need to influence policy on care. The renewal of the Hewlett Foundation funded WE-Care grant is therefore intended to build on increased recognition of the relationship between unpaid care and women’s economic empowerment and support work to: • Deepen the evidence base, and strengthen influencing capacity on Women’s Economic Empowerment (WEE) and unpaid care; • Develop and test a variety of influencing resources, strategies, and approaches for use at national, regional, and international levels; and • Capture and disseminate learning within the development sector about effective influencing for policy change on WEE and unpaid care.

5. Background/Justification of Research Care work is a cross-cutting and multi-layered phenomenon. Although the HCS took a holistic approach and incorporated a variety of different factors, some important dimensions were not included. ln the first HCS there was no VAW/GBV questions, we rectified this in the follow up study in 2015. However, violence might play an important role in shaping the allocation of care work at the household level. Experiences of violence can negatively affect women’s confidence and bargaining power, and the fear of violence might prevent women from speaking up to redistribute or reduce care work. For example, during an RCA in Uganda, some women said that they did care work because otherwise their husbands would beat them. (adopted from the HCS Oxfam Report 2015)

6. Operational Research: Social norms underpinning inequalities in care work and gender-based violence (GBV), research conducted in 3 districts of Zimbabwe The research addressed five key questions: • What are the common perceptions, attitudes and beliefs around care work and violence against women and girls in the communities? 2. Which (positive and negative) social norms dictate gendered care roles and which enable/condone VAWG and GBV – and which of these are linked? • Who are the social norm trend setters and reinforces in a given community? • What factors influence community and household members to adopt behaviours that perpetuate violence? 5. Do violence and inequalities in care work both originate from social norms?

7. Dominant Social Norm: Men as heads of households/Women as homemakers “Culturally, certain duties are meant for women but when we come to the issue of human rights, it’s not a matter of me being forced to fetch water, cook. We are looking at helping one another. It becomes a problem if a woman doesn’t do anything at all. The man will be overloaded with work. He needs to herd cattle and surely a woman can’t do that”- Male, 23, single, Zvishavane “The woman fixes the interior of the homestead since you the men will have fenced it so that enemies do not enter right? The woman fixes the interior so that the man can come and live there” – Men’s FGD, Bubi “Definitely, I have to see my husband as the head! That is how it is. I can never be above my husband” – Female, 23, Zvishavane

8. Dominant Social Norm: Respectability and Submission important characteristics for women and girls (especially in marriage) “ A bad woman is a woman who doesn’t inform her husband of her whereabouts” – Women’s FGD Bubi “I agree because a woman is supposed to submit herself under her husband as stated in the bible tells women to submit.” – Women’s FGD, Zvishavane “I agree with it because if a woman submits herself to her husband it gives a good example to the children. If they see their father being looked down upon that may lead to them disobeying him and not respecting him’’ – Women’s FGD Zvishavane

9. Social Norm: Lobola/bride price and ownership of women’s bodies “She is not allowed to refuse sex. Even when she is tired, she can lie on her side. Naturally, when I marry you I am entitled to the sex. That is what you came for” – Men’s FGD, Umzingwane On marital sex/rape – “Yes it is allowed if you don’t feel like it to say no. A woman can do it but she must be careful in future, the husband ends up having extra marital affairs. Then you say he is cruel. So you have to do it even if you don’t feel like it” – Women’s FGD

10. Impacts of dominant social norms: Leadership and Decision-Making Impact 1: Women unable to be represented in decision-making because of the control of their movements –i.e the social norm that women should be in the home, that when they go out it should be for ‘productive’ purposes that benefit the whole household Impact 2: Women unable to be represented in decision-making and leadership because men are leaders, men are heads of households and institutions

11. Impact of dominant social norms-and how they impact on UCW and VAW Note: GBV/VAW whether isolated or systemic is not caused by a single factor Men’s control of women leads to GBV inc Sexual Violence The social norm that women in marriage settings belong to husbands means they must do as they are told; Social norm that women must respect and submit unquestionably to their husbands. Women who do not do this are at risk of GBV “The problem I have with my wife is that we want to be equals in everything. If I instruct my wife to do something she opposes and says it cannot be done resulting in us fighting” – Male, Bubi “Honestly the issue of my wife always moving in different homesteads and seeing her friends..these activities are not productive at all then we fight” – Male, 33, married, Zvishavane When norms bring together expectations of women as carers for example, and when these are not met, GBV can be the result. Equally, the other way around, norms bring expectations of men (e.g. men seen as "witched" in Uganda if they do care), and if they do care they experience mocking or criticism, etc.

12. What is the link between UCW, GBV, Social Norms?

13. What is the link between UCW, GBV, Social Norms? The division of domestic work and care responsibilities is rooted in social norms that dictate the forms of work men and women ought to engage in based on their gender role. The occurrence of gender-based violence (GBV) is rooted in social norms that dictate the roles, responsibilities and behaviours that men and women should conform to based on their gender role. Women are seen as property once married as men have paid bride price. So they see themselves as owning their labour, their bodies, - here men's sense of ownership translates into owning women's care role and women's bodily integrity. In Malawi, for example in RCAs, sex was repeatedly discussed as part of care work - women saw this as a care task. Thus, we can conclude that the link between UCW and GBV is that both operate on the basis of social norms related to traditional gender roles.

14. Disruption of dominant social norms The work done in WE-Care phase 1 shows that there was a disruption of the traditional gender roles related to care work. There is evidence that men and boys were engaging in care work across all communities. However, GBV does accour even in such settings because of the dominant social norms-participants ultimately upheld the view that the home was the woman’s domain while men should be the main economic providers. An inability to fulfil these gender roles leads to GBV in some examples: “Some times my husband would beat me when I go to the market to sell tomatoes and I would have left without cleaning the house” – Woman, IDI, Bubi. However, its important to note that traditional roles can be disrupted carefully to generate positive change for women and girls as done in WE-Care Phase 1. We disrupted norms without causing GBV so violence does not necessarily occur when disrupting traditional roles. The approaches we used starting with the RCA ensured precautions were taken, presenting it a social good, using change makers-WE-Care champions and household dialogues. ln conclusion, there is a link between UCW and VAW. Understanding this a bit more lies in our understanding of social norms and how they play out....