Health
At IWWAGE, we recognise that women’s health and economic empowerment are deeply interconnected. Access to quality, affordable healthcare is essential for women to enter, remain in, and progress in the workforce. Improved health outcomes strengthen women’s economic participation, while greater economic agency enables better health, creating a reinforcing cycle of empowerment.
IWWAGE’s work on women’s health focuses on:
Linking health and economic participation
Examining how health outcomes influence women’s ability to participate, retain, and advance in paid work across sectors and life stages.
Improving measurement and visibility of women’s work
Bringing attention to under-recognised areas such as menstrual and menopausal health, and their implications for productivity, dignity, and long-term labour market engagement.
Identifying systemic barriers and enablers
Analysing how health systems, workplace practices, and social norms shape women’s access to care and health-related decision-making.
Integrating health into economic and workplace policy
Advocating for the inclusion of women’s health needs within labour, social protection, and workplace policies to support sustained economic empowerment.
Through this work, IWWAGE positions women’s health as a strategic lever for inclusive growth, ensuring that women’s health needs are visible, valued, and embedded within broader economic and social policy agendas.
Learning note
Global Policy Summary: Childcare Crisis
- March , 2021
The COVID-19 pandemic magnified the global childcare crisis, exposing deep inequalities in how care work is valued and distributed. With school closures and limited access to childcare services, unpaid care burdens surged-falling disproportionately on women and girls. This not only undermined progress on gender equality but also strained families, reduced women’s economic participation, and weakened childcare systems globally. To ensure a just, resilient recovery, childcare must be placed at the centre of economic and social policy. Governments, donors, and the private sector must work together to support care systems that enable women’s full participation in the workforce and recognise care as essential to economic growth and social well-being. Guided by the ILO’s 5Rs of Care Framework, the policy summary outlines a roadmap for action for pathways to a stronger, more equitable future.
The COVID-19 pandemic magnified the global childcare crisis, exposing deep inequalities in how care work is valued and distributed. With school closures and limited access to childcare services, unpaid care burdens surged-falling disproportionately on women and girls. This not only undermined progress on gender equality but also strained families, reduced women’s economic participation, and weakened childcare systems globally. To ensure a just, resilient recovery, childcare must be placed at the centre of economic and social policy. Governments, donors, and the private sector must work together to support care systems that enable women’s full participation in the workforce and recognise care as essential to economic growth and social well-being. Guided by the ILO’s 5Rs of Care Framework, the policy summary outlines a roadmap for action for pathways to a stronger, more equitable future.
Learning note
Global Executive Summary: Childcare Crisis
- March , 2021
A year into the pandemic, we are no longer just worrying about progress on women’s equality coming to a standstill. We’re now seeing the possibility of such progress being reversed. Globally, women tend to work in low-paying jobs and in the informal sector’s precarious employment that has been upended by lockdowns and COVID-19 restrictions. Adding another layer to this burden, women’s unpaid care work is soaring. The childcare crisis is at a tipping point. Despite being key to human well-being and to the functioning of the economy, care work remains unrecognised, undervalued, and predominantly performed by women and girls the world over. The pandemic has accelerated the demand for care work and exacerbated entrenched gender inequalities. Childcare must be addressed within our COVID-19 recovery plans both to advance gender equality and because it makes fiscal sense. Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), and IWWAGE at LEAD have collaborated to undertake an evidence review of the current childcare crisis and the road for post-COVID recovery and resilience. This brief based on the paper released on International Women’s Day, March 8, 2021 outlines the different pathways in which COVID-19 is impacting women’s care burden, with recommendations for policy solutions and measures that could be explored in different contexts by governments, the private sector, and other key development actors, with a focus on low- and middle-income countries (LMICs).
A year into the pandemic, we are no longer just worrying about progress on women’s equality coming to a standstill. We’re now seeing the possibility of such progress being reversed. Globally, women tend to work in low-paying jobs and in the informal sector’s precarious employment that has been upended by lockdowns and COVID-19 restrictions. Adding another layer to this burden, women’s unpaid care work is soaring. The childcare crisis is at a tipping point. Despite being key to human well-being and to the functioning of the economy, care work remains unrecognised, undervalued, and predominantly performed by women and girls the world over. The pandemic has accelerated the demand for care work and exacerbated entrenched gender inequalities. Childcare must be addressed within our COVID-19 recovery plans both to advance gender equality and because it makes fiscal sense. Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), and IWWAGE at LEAD have collaborated to undertake an evidence review of the current childcare crisis and the road for post-COVID recovery and resilience. This brief based on the paper released on International Women’s Day, March 8, 2021 outlines the different pathways in which COVID-19 is impacting women’s care burden, with recommendations for policy solutions and measures that could be explored in different contexts by governments, the private sector, and other key development actors, with a focus on low- and middle-income countries (LMICs).