ActionAid works with 10 partners and over 7,000 young women across 13 cities in Ghana, Kenya, India and South Africa through its Young Urban Women: Life Choices and Livelihoods Programme.
The programme provides a platform for collectives of young women in urban areas to share knowledge and experiences and take action to claim their rights. Across these cities, young women are organizing in multiple ways to confront the lack of quality public services and infrastructure as the main reason behind their unpaid care and domestic work burden, and as a key impediment to their bodily integrity, their ability to access decent work opportunities and simply live lives of dignity.
At the root of their experiences is the reality of macro-economic policies, largely imposed by international finance institutions, that effectively erect structural barriers to social and economic rights while exploiting women’s paid and unpaid labour.