In Kenya, women’s economic empowerment programmes have been operating for a long time. However, no available data shows how successful they have been.

Against this background, early last year, Kenyatta University launched the Women’s Economic Empowerment (KU-WEE) hub. Financed by Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the centre will serve as the national research facility for gender-related matters and its research will be used to formulate policy in the country.

Under the initiative ‘What Works for Women’s Economic Empowerment, the project operating under the Centre for Gender Equity and Empowerment aims to build evidence on gender equality to guide policymakers and others when formulating transformative policies on empowerment of women in Kenya. 

“Women’s representation in the economy is marred by poor gender representation at the policy decision-making levels. Lack of clarity in policies to address workforce segregation while existing programmes and policies have not been independently evaluated are some of the rationales towards the programme,” says Prof Judith Ndombi Waudo, the hub leader.

The establishment of the hub, she says, was informed by the need for gender data and robust evidence that informs WEE  architecture in Kenya and the Eastern Africa Region.

“The goal of the hub is to build programme and policy evidence on “What Works” to advance and scale-up WEE in Kenya through research and innovation. This evidence will be used to shape policies, programmes, interventions, and advocacy efforts related to supporting WEE in Kenya,” she says.

 Gender responsiveness

She adds that the hub is coming to bridge the research gap, which is there with a mission of providing quality research-based evidence and innovations on advancing WEE in Kenya.

The research has projects under three pillars: Women’s Roles in the Public and Private Sectors; Skilling and Mentoring; and; Violence, Crisis, and Women’s Work. Its objective is to enhance women’s engagement and influence in all spheres of the economy, increase women’s employability through training, internships and skilling, prevent and reduce sexual and gender-based violence and secure women’s empowerment and agency as well as construct women’s economic empowerment indices for tracking progress made in empowering women.

The hub also hopes to promote gender-responsive budgeting processes, strengthen capacity to conduct policy-driven research and generate gender data and statistics to advance the well-being of women, girls, men and boys. Primary outcomes envisaged to be achieved through this project is to boost the representation of women in leadership positions, corporate governance, manufacturing sector, as well as reduce gender-based violence by half, by 2025.

Apart from that, at least four gender-responsive policies must be implemented to protect women and communities against sudden adverse socio-economic shocks by 2025.

“We also hope that a new women’s economic empowerment measurement index will be constructed and demonstrated. Additionally, we hope that a new gender-responsive budgeting tool will also be developed and shared with stakeholders by 2025,” Prof Waudo adds.

Prof Simon Onywere, the hub’s Field Coordinator, says there are data gaps when it comes to knowing what works for WEE and that is why research is needed to understand success factors and track progress. Once statistics are available, they will help researchers and implementers track progress and understand the full extent and nature of women’s economic opportunities.

To ensure they get accurate information, they have been sending researchers to collect data. They are also using different approaches to get to the target population. Among the main partners working with the university is the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS), Tharaka Nithi County government, the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) and the Ministry of Public Service and Gender.

 “We have made a lot of progress with the project. So far all concepts have been drafted, all projects approved, initial stakeholder engagement done and some policies made. We have about 102 researchers on board and we have carried out three pilot projects,” says Onywere.

He reveals that to address the weak nexus between WEE policies, programmes and gender data in Kenya, the hub has initiated 12 research studies to gather the required data. The studies are using mixed methods, which include a collection of quantitative and qualitative data and one Randomised Control Trial (RCT). The project aims to use credible research evidence to shape policies, programmes, interventions, and advocacy efforts that move Kenyan women forward in all spheres of the economy.

Creche programme

 “We will be producing foundation research to understand what matters for WEE and understand pathways that enable women’s work. We will carry out an impact evaluation in one of the thematic areas using RCT to generate evidence on causal relationships and the effectiveness of a promising intervention to improve WEE,” adds Onywere.

The project will involve capacity building to ensure that strong institutions and networks emerge and are available to partner with governments and others on evidence generation for WEE. They will also train researchers in advocacy and communications strategy to ensure that they package the evidence well so that it is impactful.

“The hub is expected to build the capacity of junior researchers, postgraduate students, and partners in research, policy advocacy, and communication strategies on women economic empowerment,” he says

Waudo says some findings from the research done so far shows that unpaid work, especially child care, is one of the major reason most women don’t participate in the labour force actively or are not economically empowered as most of them spend between one hour to 16 hours offering child care.

Scaling up

To come up with a solution to this problem, the centre has initiated further research in Tharaka Nithi county to evaluate the effectiveness of the crèche programme, set up in the Chuka market to enable women traders to accomplish the duo role of childcare and participation in income-generating activities.

“In partnership with the Economic Growth Center-Yale University, the research aims to establish crèches with children’s feeding rooms and mothers’ lactating rooms, and evaluate the effects of such a programme on child development, women’s labour force participation and psychosocial well-being of both children and mothers,” she adds.

Researchers will seek to determine and evaluate factors that influence the use of crèche and quantify time spent on childcare and its application to women’s livelihood strategies, economic empowerment and well-being. They will then make policy recommendations, based on evidence, for the institutionalisation of the crèche and lactating rooms programme.

“The primary outcome of the study is the improvement of women’s economic productivity or well-being by 20 per cent through reduced childcare burden in at least five sub-counties in Tharaka Nithi County by 2025. Anticipated research outputs will be key in informing governments and other stakeholders at the county, national and regional levels on what works to enhance WEE, particularly through female labour force participation,” she adds.

She explains that they opted to work with Tharaka Nithi county because it is the only county that had an ongoing child care programme and was willing to partner with them. Once the programme is successful at the county level, they aim to replicate it in other counties.

To ensure this is a success they are training those who will be manning those facilities and are also coming up with a curriculum to ensure that children who will be using those facilities are handled professionally. This will help improve not only the children’s welfare but also the well-being of the caregivers.

Prof  Waudo, however, reveals that it has not been easy to achieve this because of several obstacles such as lack of infrastructure, lack of policy to guide those taking care of children below the age of four years, shortage of funds among others.

“We have been forced to improvise the existing early childhood development and education centres for this research to go on. We didn’t foresee this, but since there is no other way out, we have to work with what is readily available. Our vision was to build modern childcare facilities with play areas, sleep areas, lactating rooms and toilets and all relevant tools and equipment. With such facilities we will improve the child care services and be able to relieve mothers from child care and enable them to participate in other economic activities,” she says.