A root cause of gender inequality, and major obstacle to women's empowerment, in both rural and urban areas, is the huge burden of unpaid care work carried out by women and girls. This takes up a big proportion of their time and energy, leaving little for education, paid work or starting small businesses. Redistributing the burden of care work within the family -- and beyond, with the state, private sector and the community bearing some of the burden -- is crucial to giving women and girls the possibility to be empowered economically and socially. Participatory grass roots approaches to intervening at household level include IFAD's Household Methodologies https://www.ifad.org/topic/household_methodologies/overview and the GALS.
Ms. Hazel Bedford