Note on IWWAGE Findings
April, 2019
IWWAGE promotes, synthesises and generates evidence on ‘What Works’ for women’s economic empowerment in India. The initiative focuses on moving from ‘How’ to ‘What Works’ to improve women’s participation in economic activities through access to decent work and economic resources, strengthen social protection networks, and facilitate gender transformative policies. To take the agenda of evidence generation forward, in the last one year, three studies have been undertaken by IWWAGE in India. This document summarises the findings from the three studies and lists the key policy concerns and recommendations that emerge across each of them. These include:
- Study on Centre based Child Care as a solution for Maternal Employment and Early Childhood Development: Recognising the complex and synergetic relationship between access to childcare facilities and women’s economic empowerment, a secondary review of global practices was undertaken to put together evidence on how accessible, affordable and quality center-based childcare can support women by reducing and redistributing the unpaid care work, and how it impacts maternal employment as well as early childhood development for children under 6 years
- Study on SHG digitisation: The study highlights that the majority of focus has been on MIS digitisation, followed by monitoring of SHGs. Linking of facilitators and group members to digital tools is in early stages of piloting and digitisation of livelihoods data is a distant goal.
- A rapid assessment of 181 Helpline scheme: IWWAGE was commissioned by the Ministry of Women and Child Development to undertake a rapid assessment of the implementation of the helpline scheme across different states in the country. The study was carried out across 11 states and aimed to understand the current status of implementation of the scheme along – i. Functionality of the 181 helpline; ii. State level MIS/databases; iii. Responsiveness of Centre staff, and iv. Integration between 181 Women’s helpline (WHL) and One Stop Centre (OSC).
Resource Type Learning note
Topics Gender, childcare, SHGs, digitisation ,