Actionaid Ghana is calling on government to consider unpaid care work by women and girls in society and give it the needed recognition.

This call is necessitated by the fact that data on such work is most often, not captured in data and national debates in the country. By providing compensation for the work and by also reducing the burden for individual women, they believe such women can be more advantaged.

Speaking at a national dialogue session on unpaid and care work, the manager for promoting Opportunities for women Empowerment and Rights (POWER) project ActionAid Ghana, Azumi Mesuna said even though this unpaid care work contributes to the development to the society, it is not counted as work that contributes to the Gross Domestic Product of the country.

“We want unpaid care work women and girls to be seen as work, to be recognized by stakeholders especially government, household members and any other person in the society that is benefitting the externality of unpaid workers”.

ActionAid also wants the burden on individual women reduced in the society generally, which they believe can be done by providing accessible and affordable child care services for communities and other institutions.

“We want redistribution to ensure that Government provides enough facilities such as child care centers, water harvesting structures to household and health care centers close to their household to reduce burden.”

They urged government to take a greater share of the healthcare provision by setting up an effective public healthcare system in the country and also redistributing unpaid work care fairly among different people.

Unpaid care work refers to all unpaid service provided within the household for its members including care of persons, housework and voluntary community work.

In Ghana majority of the women spend almost 13 hours per day in an unpaid care services. This care work often shifted to other women and girls in the households as a results and has major implications for girls’ education. The Dual responsibilities for both unpaid care work and earning an income which many women carry contribute to gender inequality.

The Actionaid is therefore advocating for a recognition, reduction of burden on women and a redistribution of unpaid care among different people.