Give to children

The government's role in helping working families

The workplace must be transformed to recognise the role that both parents play in child rearing, as required by article 18 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Social policies and programs should be promoted to enable women and men to reconcile their work and family responsibilities and encourage men to take on an equal share of domestic chores and childcare.

Governments should undertake legislative, administrative and financial measures to create a strong and enabling environment for women’s entrepreneurship and participation in the labour market, including improved employment conditions; creating career development opportunities; eliminating pay gaps based solely on gender; and, providing safe, affordable, high-quality child-care arrangements.

A further step towards ensuring women’s rights, greater public transparency and economic efficiency is the increasing use of gender-responsive budgets. This mechanism analyses the impact of government expenditure and revenue on women and girls compared to men and boys. It neither requires separate budgets for women, nor does it aim to solely increase spending on women-specific programs. Instead, it helps governments decide how policies should be adjusted, and where resources need to be reallocated to address poverty and gender inequalities.

Budget initiatives aimed at eliminating gender disparities focus on national, provincial and municipal processes and may cover the overall budget or only selected parts of it. They can be carried out within government by the Ministry of Finance in conjunction with the Ministry of Women’s Affairs or other branches of government related to social welfare, or by non-governmental organisations and independent researchers.

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Partnerships