‘You cannot live without money’: Balancing women’s unpaid care work and paid work in Rwanda

This paper summarises the findings of mixed method research that was carried out in Rwanda exploring how women’s economic empowerment (WEE) policies and programmes take unpaid care work into account in order to maximise benefits across households and generations. It reflects the voices and experiences of women and their household members participating in WEE programmes across four sites in the rural districts of Musanze and Huye.

This study and its findings indicate that women are the primary caregivers in families, although older children in particular and spouses to some extent also engage in some care tasks. Women’s paid work opportunities are more limited than men’s because of gender norms around certain types of work and because they have less time to find out about paid work opportunities due to their involvement in care work.