Comment on UN Women's E-Discussion: How Can Grant Making Better Support Women’s Civil Society?

The October 2017 Empower Women E-Discussion focuses on the question "How Can Grant Making Better Support Women's Civil Society"?  My intervention focuses on maquiladora workers' campaign for employer-sponsored child care in Central America.

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One area in which grant makers can make a big difference in tackling all three issues (Leaving No One Behind, Capacity Development, and Learning from What Doesn't Work) is by supporting workplace-sponsored child care in low and middle income countries.  

A case in point is the current campaign by maquiladora (export processing zone) workers in Central America.  Local women's advocacy groups and trade unions are advocating that their employers and international brands follow laws in Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala to establish employer-sponsored child care.  

On October 12, 2017, the International Finance Corporation (IFC) issued a report Tackling Childcare The Business Case for Employer-Supported Childcare.  This excellent report reinforces the campaign by providing data demonstrating how workplace-sponsored child care can be good for business.  The report discusses 10 original in-depth case studies that show how employers in blue, pink and white collar companies have made workplace-sponsored child care work in low-, middle- and high-income countries.  This is a report that women's and children's advocates - including Corporate Social Responsibility advocates within companies - can take to skeptical CEOs, CFOs and Boards of Directors to persuade them to fund and implement workplace-sponsored child care.

As discussed in my piece in IntLawGrrls IFC report on business case for workplace childcare reinforces maquiladora workers’ campaign in Central America, workplace-sponsored child care plays an important role not only for companies and their employees, but for society in general.  The IFC, OECD and Inter-American Development Bank (IADB) have all pointed to the importance of early childhood education to the development of young minds - and to the lack of good early childhood education programs in many low- and middle-income countries.

This is an area where grant makers can make a difference.  While the IFC shows how workplace-sponsored child care benefits the bottom line of company coffers (reduction of absenteeism, for example, or attracting new business as a result of good practices), there are significant start-up and other costs involved in setting up workplace-sponsored child care programs.  Companies in low- and middle-income countries will have a difficult time coming up with these initial costs - especially in low margin industries where women predominate, like garment manufacturing and agriculture.  International brands can support workpace-sponsored child care with both funding and purchasing policies that favor suppliers with workplace-sponsored child care.  Other international companies can support workplace-sponsored child care programs through education grants and their Corporate Social Responsibility programs.  

International grant makers can play a unique role in funding both initial start-up costs for and programs supporting workplace-sponsored child care.  Examples include:

• Funding needs assessments, surveys and focus groups of working parents to learn about what kind of programs they want and need (Disney funded a needs assessment in Central America through local women's groups and facilitated by Canada-based Maquiladora Solidarity Network) 
• Funding dialogue between local workers, worker representatives, women's rights groups, employers, international brands and governments to ensure that child care programs are feasible and meet workers' and children's needs;
• Developing programs that provide companies and trade unions with guidance on how to establish effective workplace-sponsored child care programs that meet workers' needs and children's educational needs;
• Developing programs to provide workforce development training and certification programs for childcare providers at varying education levels;
• Supporting secondary and university-level Early Childhood Education programs in low-income and middle-income countries;
• Funding legal research on the development of national laws that create the best legal environment to support workplace-sponsored child care;
• Funding initial start-up costs for workplace-sponsored child care programs.

Working women in Central America have challenged their employers and governments to follow national laws to implement employer-sponsored child care programs.  International grant makers can help working women, employers, governments and the global CSR community to meet that challenge.

IFC report on business case for workplace childcare reinforces maquiladora workers’ campaign in Central America

MSN 2016

Simultaneously published on IntLawGrrls.

Lack of quality, affordable child care is a significant concern for working parents in every region in the world, regardless of country or socioeconomic status.  According to the 2017 OECD report The Pursuit of Gender Equality An Uphill Battle, single parents - usually working moms - in the U.S. and Ireland pay up to 45% of their disposable income for affordable childcare.  In countries like Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala, the lack of quality, affordable child care is just one of several challenges to leveraging working people and entire countries out of poverty.  Other challenges include the lack of adequate social security provisions and inadequate or non-existent early childhood education programs.  Authors of the 2016 IADB study Cashing in on Education: Women, Childcare and Prosperity in Latin America and the Caribbean argue that the key to boosting Latin American countries out of poverty is female labor force participation - and that child care and early childhood education are key policy measures to move more women into paid work outside the home.  Social security contributions made by working women and their employers strengthen social security systems in poorer countries - and reducing pay gaps between women and men would strengthen social security systems even more.
 
Maquiladora workers, trade unions and women's rights activists in Honduras and El Salvador made workplace funded child care a key platform in their workplace advocacy campaign in 2014.  With the collaboration of Canada-based Maquiladora Solidarity Network, they have focused their advocacy efforts on international apparel brands, industry associations and governments to develop and implement viable childcare solutions.

As outlined in MSN's  guide to legal requirements and international conventions Childcare in Central America, labor laws in Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala require employers to provide child care facilities for their employees.  In 2014, the Government of Honduras, Honduran trade unions and the Honduran Manufacturers Association entered into a tripartite agreement to work on establishing some form of employer-provided child care program for textile manufacturing workers.  Employers have been slow to fund child care centers due to cost and capacity factors as well as lack of clarity in Honduran law - stalling the process.

IFC 2017, p. 21 

Reinforcement for Central American maquiladora workers' campaign for employer-provided child care has come from an unexpected source.  The IFC's new report  Tackling Childcare The Business Case for Employer-Supported Childcare uses case studies to show that not only is sponsoring child care programs the right thing to do, it is the right thing to do to succeed in business.  As expected, the case studies examined include white collar employers in the IT, financial services, and healthcare industries in wealthy countries like the United States, Japan and Germany.  More to the point to maquiladora workers in Central America, the case studies include blue collar employers in garment manufacturing, agriculture and heavy manufacturing industries in low- and middle-income countries like Jordan, South Africa, Turkey and Brazil.  In fact, the IFC report emphasizes the heightened need for high quality employer-sponsored child care in low income countries, where lack of access to quality early education and care programs can have a long-lasting negative impact on the growing minds of children - and where the economic security of families is threatened when parents must choose between working to provide for their families or staying at home to care for their children.

The report shows that investing in child care improves employee performance by reducing absenteeism, enhancing worker productivity, and increasing employee commitment and motivation.  The positive impression and improved  company reputation resulting from providing quality child care can help companies recruit and retain good employees.  In countries like Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala where employer-sponsored childcare is a legal requirement, companies can attract more international business by showing their compliance with local laws.  Thus, making an investment in child care programs can be an income generator for companies.

From a practical standpoint, many companies and employers do not know where to start even if they want to implement a child care program.  CSR advocates within companies need the data and information to persuade CEOs, CFOs and Boards of Directors that the investment is needed.  Establishing and maintaining a workplace child care program isn't cheap.  At the launch of Tackling Childcare, Farhan Ifram, the CEO of Jordanian garment manufacturer MAS Kreeda, observed that the initial investment in his company's child care center was close to $100,000.

This is where the IFC's report will be truly useful.  Not only does the report contain evidence that can be used to persuade skeptical company boards and officials that sponsoring child care is good for the bottom line - it contains advice on what steps companies must take to develop child care programs that are both high quality and meet the needs of employees.  A key element  to developing a good child care program is working with employees and their representatives to ensure the program meets their needs personally and culturally.  The report pays attention to the needs of child care workers for training, certification and decent pay and working conditions.  Accommodations must be made in situations where workers currently pay family members and neighbors for child care to ensure there are not unintended negative impacts on extended family and neighborhood economies.

Finding the funding to establish high quality child care centers is a significant challenge, but one that can be overcome.  In the Central American case, international brands can be a source of support for suppliers that take the plunge to establish child care programs - both financially (for example, through one-time start-up grants) and through increased business.  International brands do not have to provide all the financing and support, however.  Tackling Childcare points to a reframing of broader existing CSR culture.  In 2013, Fortune 500 companies spent $15.2 billion on CSR initiatives.  Of that, $2.6 billion was spent on education - in both CSR contributions and grants.  If even one tenth of that amount were spent on grants for employer-sponsored child care program start-ups, workers at over 3,000 garment factories would benefit directly - with untold benefits for the education and health of working parents and children.  Working women, their trade unions and women's rights advocates in Central America have taken the lead in the campaign for employer-sponsored child care in their countries.  It is time for their employers, international brands, and the international community to accept the challenge - and be models for the rest of the world.