Gender Justice and Empowerment: Evaluating Women’s Unpaid Care Work in Nigeria

Abstract

Nigeria has policies and strategies in place to promote gender equality, participation and empowerment. Nevertheless, women‟s socio-economic remains significantly low. Reasons for all of these are rooted in three major challenges: socio-cultural barriers, gender stereotypes, and illiteracy among the populace. It is against this backdrop that this paper seeks to evaluate women unpaid domestic work reflecting on the interplay of gender, culture and stereotypes. Unfortunately, unpaid domestic care work is generally perceived to be less valuable than paid work, it is ignored, under-estimated and not considered to be “work”; even by the women and men who engage in and benefit directly from these activities. The paper showcases how gender responsive approaches in division of labour can be utilized for women domestic unpaid work to be recognised and its economic value estimated.