Insights on the impact of a preschool intervention on women’s labor market outcomes in Kenya’s Tharaka Nithi County.

Kenya’s economy has grown by around 4-5% annually in recent years, and yet the gender gap in labor force participation has widened – from 6 percentage points in 2016 to 9 percentage points in 2024. This growing gap in labor market engagement is accompanied by persistent gender disparities in unpaid care and domestic work.

Data from our ongoing study in Kenya’s Tharaka Nithi County (TNC) illustrate this gender imbalance: mothers of 3-year-old children report spending on average 3 hours per day on childcare and around 4 hours on chores and household tasks – more than twice the time spent by fathers. This is in addition to the time mothers spend on productive activities in the home (around 4.5 to 5 hours) and other engagements. Many of these engagements likely involve multitasking, such as simultaneously looking after their young children, thereby limiting mothers’ productivity.

To address these challenges, we collaborated with the County Government of Tharaka Nithi to design a preschool-based model of care provision that extends access to early childhood education to younger children starting from age 3 – one year earlier than the standard entry age. By enriching the early learning environments and enrolling younger children in preschools, this tailored intervention aims to promote children’s cognitive and socio-emotional development during a formative phase of their lives, while also enhancing mothers’ ability to engage in paid work and other activities.