When I began my MA in Gender and Development at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS), I was already familiar with care as something deeply personal. I had seen it in families, schools, communities, and women’s everyday lives. But through my dissertation on public childcare in Peru, I came to understand care differently: not only as love or responsibility, but as infrastructure. By infrastructure, I mean the systems that make everyday life and economic participation possible: not only roads, schools or hospitals, but also the services that allow people to work, study, care and live with dignity. Childcare is one of these foundations because without it, many women’s access to employment, education and public life remains limited.

Childcare is often treated as a private family arrangement, something parents must organise around work. Yet the availability, affordability and quality of childcare shape whether women can study, look for work, accept a job, start a business, participate in public life or rest. When childcare is missing, unreliable, or too expensive, the cost is not shared equally. It is usually absorbed by women, especially mothers in low-income households, women in informal work, rural women and those with fewer support networks.

My research on public nurseries in Peru set out from a simple question: do childcare services only support children, or can they also expand women’s economic autonomy? The answer, of course, depends on how those services are designed. A place of childcare is not automatically transformative if it is far from home, if opening hours do not match women’s working timetables, if its quality is inconsistent, or if the women providing care are underpaid and undervalued.

In Peru, public services such as Cuna Más play a relevant role in early childhood development, particularly for children under three in situations of poverty or vulnerability. This matters enormously. My dissertation pushed me to ask a broader question: what would it mean to treat childcare as part of a care system that supports women’s rights, employment and decent work, rather than just a social programme for children?

Looking at Wales changed the questions I was asking about childcare. In Peru, Cuna Más primarily focuses on early childhood development among families experiencing poverty, although it also enables parents to work or study. In Wales, the Childcare Offer explicitly connects funded childcare with parents’ employment or education, while Flying Start brings together early childhood care, health and family support. What struck me was how these different policy priorities shape who receives support and what opportunities become possible. It made me realise that providing childcare is only part of the challenge; how governments design and connect these services matters just as much. Yet Wales also revealed a tension: when access to funded childcare depends on employment or education, some parents may struggle to access the very support they need to enter the labour market.

A conversation with representatives from Women’s Equality Network Wales also helped me see both the possibilities and limits of childcare policy in a high-income context. Wales still faces challenges around affordability, flexibility, provider sustainability and the recognition of care workers. In other words, funded childcare does not automatically solve gender inequality. But it does show that childcare can be framed as a public issue, rather than a private burden.

For Peru, the lesson is not to “copy Wales”. The lesson is to ask better questions.

Is childcare available where women live and work? This is particularly important in a country marked by rural, urban, and peri-urban inequalities. Is it affordable enough to expand real choices, rather than simply reproduce exclusion? Is it accessible in practice, including mothers who work informally, lack documentation, or cannot navigate complex systems? Does it provide good quality for children? And does it provide decent work for carers?

That last question is essential. A childcare policy that helps some women enter paid work while relying on the poorly paid labour of other women is incomplete. A feminist care policy must recognise both those who receive care and those who provide it. Otherwise, the burden is not transformed; it is simply moved from one group of women to another.

This is why childcare should be understood as economic policy. Peru’s 2024 National Time Use Survey found that women spent an average of 5 hours and 7 minutes on unpaid work on weekdays, compared with 2 hours and 9 minutes for men. Globally, the International Labour Organization estimated that 708 million women were outside the labour force in 2023 because of unpaid care responsibilities. Although these figures extend beyond childcare alone, they reveal how unequal care responsibilities can limit women’s time and economic opportunities. For me, the message is simple: the opportunity to work, study or build financial independence means little if reliable childcare remains out of reach.

At IDS, I learned that development policy is never neutral. The way a state organises care reveals what it values: whose time counts, whose work is recognised, and whose future is made possible. If childcare is treated as a private problem or service, women’s economic participation will continue to hinge on family resources, informal networks, and personal sacrifice. If it is treated as public infrastructure, it can become part of a more equal development agenda.

This does not mean reducing women to workers or measuring childcare only through productivity. The goal is not simply to move mothers into the labour market so that economies can grow. The goal is freedom: the freedom to work, study, care, rest, participate and choose.

Childcare is therefore not a secondary issue. It sits at the centre of gender equality, early childhood development, labour policy, and social justice. Peru and Wales are very different contexts, but looking at them together makes one thing clear: care is political. It is also economic.

If we are serious about inclusive development, we must stop treating care as what happens after the “real economy” has been discussed. Care sustains the economy. The question is not whether states can afford to invest in childcare. The question is what kind of development becomes impossible when they do not.

Resources
Reports: https://wenwales.org.uk/en/about-wen/annual-reports/
Cuna más reports: https://www.gob.pe/institucion/cunamas/informes-publicaciones
Wales: https://www.gov.wales/flying-start-childcare-guide-parents-and-carers
ILO: https://www.ilo.org/publications/advancing-decent-work-and-care-economy-essential-component-social
 

Cover photo by: Rosa Caramantín, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Disclaimer 

The views expressed in this opinion piece are those of the author/s and do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of IDS.