Women, work, and child welfare in the Third World

Abstract

The studies in this volume address the questions of how women manage their work and child care responsibilities in developing countries and whether specific types or patterns of womens work have negative impacts on child welfare. The multifaceted nature of womens work and child welfare and the benefits of using a variety of research approaches and methodologies are evident in this collection. Chapters 2 and 3 demonstrate that when carefully analyzed and considered as a whole a great deal can be learned from research and project evaluations that may not have been specifically designed to focus on the relationship between womens work and child welfare. These 2 overview chapters are included because they present interesting preliminary findings concerning the relationship between womens work and 2 key aspects of child welfare--child nutrition and child care--and provide a framework and point of departure for reading the country-specific studies in chapters 4-11. At each studys core is the question of whether womens work particularly recent increases or changes in womens labor force participation may have a detrimental effect on the welfare of children in the Third World. The findings vary considerably depending on the specific characteristics of womens work in the study population the particular measures of child welfare used and the theoretical and methodological approach taken. It is clearly important to disaggregate both the concepts of womens work and child welfare. Key characteristics of womens work--such as type of work location of work time spent working income earned and work-related benefits--as well as key aspects of child welfare--such as morbidity nutritional status cognitive development dietary intake and caregiver--need to be defined and measured separately.