Researchers in the Ugandan capital, Kampala, have found strong evidence that business women’s incomes and overall welfare are significantly improved when there is good-quality childcare.
Findings from the technical progress report of research conducted between October 2023 and March 2024 linked higher income levels among market women in Kampala with access to childcare services. The researchers further reported statistically higher levels of well-being among mothers and children who had access to childcare.
“Overall, at this point in the study …we find some early evidence that profits and women’s well-being may have been positively impacted”, the researchers stated in the report.
Commissioned by Growth and Economic Opportunities for Women (GrOW) – East Africa, the project, titled “Supporting parenting care corners in markets to reduce unpaid care work for the vulnerable businesswomen in Uganda,” addressed unpaid care work among women in Uganda.
It sought to analyze the effects of gaining access to childcare services, including women’s labor force participation and productivity, willingness to pay for childcare services, and women’s and children’s well-being.
The preliminary results used the data collected from 972 working mothers drawn from five Kampala markets: Kalerwe, Nakawa, Nateete, Kireka, and Kibuye. The first round of data collection covered 774 women, with 339 in the control, 218 in the market, and 219 in the community.
The researchers also sampled a sixth market – Kame Valley Market – in Mukono town.
The study was a three-arm, individual-level, randomized controlled trial that lasted eight months and tested two distinct interventions against a control group.
The women who participated in the research were divided into three groups: one control group and two treatment groups.
Women in treatment arm one were allowed to enroll one child aged eight to 48 months in a childcare facility in the market, where they worked for up to eight months.
The second treatment arm facilitated mothers with a bursary to enrol one child within the same age into a community-based childcare facility. No financial benefits were extended to the control arm of the study.
Four key primary outcomes underlay the study’s hypothesis. These were increased women’s labor force participation, improved women’s business turnover, improved women’s well-being, and better child development.
Other considerations included the willingness to pay for childcare services and improved women’s agency or locus of control.
The researchers also factored in the spillover to other household members in terms of time spent caring for a child enrolled in childcare and heterogeneity in terms of wealth, proximity to markets, and the age of women and children.
Various interesting variances were observed even among the three individual groups. For example, it emerged that childcare take-up and use were higher in the community group than in the market group, a factor that the researchers hypothesized was due to easier access to these services.
The researchers found no statistically significant effects of market-based childcare on working hours, leisure hours, domestic hours, revenues, wage earnings, and depression.
They also noted that there was a positive and statistically significant effect of access to community-based childcare for profits but negative and statistically significant for depression.
Analysis of the effect of access to community-based childcare on other childcare impacts also yielded statistically insignificant results.
Even though the technical report’s findings are still preliminary, pending the completion of data collection from Mukono and additional data cleaning and processing, the researchers express optimism that the current findings provide strong indications that the interventions had a consequent effect on women’s uptake of childcare services.
“Overall, at this point in the study, we see that the interventions were used and significantly affected women’s usage of childcare services. All of these analyses are still preliminary as we wait for the data collection from Mukono to be completed. However, we find this initial look at the results encouraging and are excited to continue pushing the analysis forward.”
Once completed, the project will help to deepen the evidence base on whether and how reducing women’s unpaid childcare burden increases their productivity and income. It will also examine the factors that impede access to parenting care facilities among vulnerable women engaged in business markets in Uganda and how these could be mitigated.
The findings will further provide a basis to evaluate the effects of parenting care facilities on the productivity of mothers and the profitability of their businesses and inform government action through tested and proven models for scaling up parenting care corners to both structured and unstructured markets.
Ultimately, the project will provide a proof of concept on how governments can introduce affordable, effective, and sustainable childcare models that work for vulnerable mothers who work in informal markets in Uganda.
