IDS and ActionAid International held an unpaid care capacity building workshop in Kathmandu, Nepal. The purpose of the four day workshop was to sensitise government officials to issues around unpaid care and how they could be integrated into social protection policies. The workshop included ActionAid Nepal employees, representatives of partner organisations, government officials, legal officers, and women rights advocates.

The objectives of the workshop were to:

1. Increase participants’ understanding of how care and women’s rights are key to achieving social justice
2. Review and discuss key policy demands that can address women’s disproportionate responsibility to provide care
3. Identify stakeholders that will help to bring about change and discuss advocacy strategies and entry points
4. Begin to develop a collective advocacy strategy that can raise the visibility of women’s care work and push the state to take on greater responsibilities for care provision

The expected outputs of the workshop were to:

1. Agree on the change we want to see as a group so that care and women’s rights become a social justice issue
2. Identify some key policy changes that will help to bring about this change, specific to the social protection sector in Nepal
3. Complete a stakeholder analysis to identify the issues and entry points in this sector
4. Develop elements of a national advocacy strategy

Over the course of the four days, participants engaged in a range of activities, including looking at key local and global policies on care, stakeholder mapping and power analysis.

At the end of the workshop participants were asked what they would now do differently after attending the workshop. Responses included sharing household duties more, sharing the methodologies used during the event and engaging in more advocacy around unpaid care work. Some participants commented that their understanding of unpaid care as a social justice issue had increased, and that they now had greater respect for ‘women’s work’.