The sexual and reproductive health and
rights (SRHR) of women and girls are too often sidelined from key policy
debates on women’s rights: dismissed as controversial and separate to
discussions on women’s economic and political lives. Decision-makers and
politicians silo different aspects of women and girls’ lives in policy
initiatives, neatly separating rights related to bodily autonomy from workplace
rights in ways that are neither realistic nor helpful.
The lives of women and girls are complex,
varied and intersectional. SRHR cuts across every aspect of women and girls’
lives, both enabling and limiting life opportunities. The freedom to
decide if and when we marry and have children, to live free from violence, and
to make decisions regarding our bodies are key to empowering women
economically.
Despite this trend, it is important to look
behind the numbers, and assess the extent to which women's work is empowering.
‘Women’s economic empowerment’ is a term that has come to mean
everything and nothing in policy terms, not only because the concept of ‘empowerment’
is so difficult to measure. Rather than view women’s economic empowerment
solely within the prism of economic growth, we must unpack the complex systems
that uphold women’s inequality, and avoid falling into the trap of assuming
women’s formal labour force participation and contribution to the market
economy is necessarily empowering. We must instead look at how our
current economic models uphold women’s inequality and identify where women
work and why they work, as well as the quality of their working
conditions.
Women’s work
Much of women’s work remains hidden and
unpaid. A major reason for this is that women around the world are
disproportionately responsible for undertaking care work. Care work is mostly
unpaid labour undertaken by women and girls such as child care, elder care,
taking care of ill family members, cooking and cleaning. The ‘care
economy’, which includes paid and unpaid care work and is primarily
undertaken by women and girls, and has an impact on their life opportunities
outside of the home. Continue here to read more
News credit: Womendeliver
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