A virtuous cycle? The unintended consequences of gender-targeted early childhood development (ECD) programmes

43 percent of children under the age of five living in low- and middle-income countries are at risk of failing to meet their developmental potential (Black et al., 2017). Gaining access to good quality early childhood development (ECD) programmes could improve childhood health and educational outcomes as well as

contribute to better adult trajectories longer-term (Cawley et al., 2001; Heckman et al., 2006; Van der Gaag, 2010; Engle et al., 2011; Gertler et al., 2014; Black et al., 2017). ECD has become a policy priority, universally endorsed in the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (Britto et al., 2016; Black et al., 2017; Richter et al.,

2017). Since women provide more than three-quarters of total unpaid childcare work globally (Clark et al. 2019), it is no surprise that many studies piloting and testing ECD programmes target the mother as the main childcare provider within the household. Emerging economic research suggests that access to quality

childcare could have positive effects for women's empowerment, but that these impacts vary both by the target age range of the programme, as well as the modality1 of childcare being tested in the intervention (Evans et al., 2021; J-PAL, 2023). Childcare continues to be a "women's work", relying on mothers, grandmothers, older sisters, and other

female relatives to provide childcare in the absence of nurseries or daycare (Samman et al., 2016). There is some evidence to suggest that ECD programmes could have a positive effect on women through changes in labour force participation, income, and time use, but also reason to think that there is significant risk of

unintended negative consequences by perpetuating harmful gender stereotypes and thus weakening their intra-household bargaining power. Despite how important this question is most evaluations of ECD programmes still only focus on outcomes of children (Evans et al., 2021). In my research I will focus on the

impacts of ECD programmes on women, the mechanisms through which these set in, and how programmes can be designed to mitigate risks of unintended adverse consequences on mothers, thus maximising the potential of this class of programmes to be beneficial for women