Accessing childcare: Parents’ logistical challenges and gender equality

Abstract

Accessing childcare: Parents’ logistical challenges and gender equality Prof Ingela Naumann from the University of Fribourg, explains why reducing parents’ logistical challenges in coordinating work and childcare matters for gender equality. Over the last two decades, we have seen an extensive expansion of early childhood education and care (ECEC) services across the countries of the OECD. A novel and ground-breaking consensus amongst policymakers and society had emerged by the beginning of the 21st century that ECEC is an essential pillar of our knowledge-based economies (see, e.g. European Commission 2018): they benefit children by fostering good child development – if the provided services are of good quality – thus supporting positive life courses and productivity of future generations; they help parents to remain active in the labour market, thus contributing to the prevention of family/child poverty and, again, boosting productivity.