{"id":42580,"date":"2026-05-15T12:41:31","date_gmt":"2026-05-15T10:41:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/world-education-blog.org\/?p=42580"},"modified":"2026-05-15T14:47:33","modified_gmt":"2026-05-15T12:47:33","slug":"mothers-are-increasingly-looking-to-go-back-to-work-and-its-driving-pre-primary-enrolment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/world-education-blog.org\/2026\/05\/15\/mothers-are-increasingly-looking-to-go-back-to-work-and-its-driving-pre-primary-enrolment\/","title":{"rendered":"Mothers are increasingly looking to work \u2013 and it’s driving pre-primary enrolment"},"content":{"rendered":"

The growth of pre-primary education globally is not simply the product of deliberate policy choices. There are broader socioeconomic transformations too, and chief among them is the rising share of mothers seeking to go to work. As this blog, drawn from the<\/span>\u00a02026 GEM Report<\/span><\/a>, argues, that shift has driven demand for early childhood care and <\/span><\/span>education in ways that are clearly visible in both data and policy histories.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Crucially, the relationship runs in both directions. Pre-primary education expands partly in response to mothers seeking work, but it is also a precondition for it. When affordable, quality childcare and education <\/span><\/span> is available, women are freed to enter or re-enter the labour market.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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Making early childhood care and education accessible<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span> so that mothers can afford to go to work<\/span><\/b><\/h3>\n

In high-income countries, women’s employment rates rose from 47% in 1995 to 54% in 2024. This was\u00a0facilitated\u00a0by governments that expanded early childhood care and <\/span><\/span>education provision, regulated a growing private care sector, and introduced subsidies to improve affordability and guarantee minimum quality standards.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Individual country experiences illustrate the gains clearly. In Quebec, Canada, low-cost universal childcare led to an estimated eight-percentage-point rise in maternal labour force participation. In Poland, a 2009 reform that lowered the primary school starting age and guaranteed preschool for 5-year-olds produced a 10% increase in available places and a 4% rise in maternal employment \u2014 particularly among highly educated mothers and families with 3-year-olds. In Spain, rolling out public preschool for 3-year-olds raised mothers’ employment probability by three to seven percentage points. Argentina saw similar gains following the expansion of public preschools.<\/span><\/p>\n

In lower-income countries, however, the picture is starkly different. Women’s employment rates have declined \u2014 from 64% to 55% in low-income countries and from 58% to 54% in upper-middle-income countries \u2014 or stagnated, as in lower-middle-income countries, where rates have\u00a0remained\u00a0around 40%. Limited full-day provision, high transport costs, and weak regulatory oversight across much of Africa, Asia, and Latin America continue to make it far harder for mothers to\u00a0afford to go back to work.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Address\u00a0labour\u00a0market policy and you may improve education outcomes too<\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/h3>\n

Policymakers need to take seriously the fact that this relationship is bidirectional. Early childcare policy histories in Europe show that it was\u00a0labour\u00a0market shifts\u00a0and\u00a0not pedagogical agendas alone that drove the\u00a0initial\u00a0expansion and\u00a0formalisation\u00a0of early childhood provision. In the Nordic countries, the rise of dual-earner households and a political commitment to gender equality formed the backdrop for near-universal entitlement to early childhood education. This supported\u00a0mothers to continue working\u00a0while also reducing the unequal burden of care that continues to fall disproportionately on women.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The data makes the connection impossible to ignore<\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/h3>\n

The likelihood that mothers work is directly associated with the number and ages of their children. Across a sample of 80 countries, an increase in pre-primary enrolment from 60% to 90% is associated with a rise in the female employment rate from 40% to 50%. Globally, the female labour force participation rate stands at 52% overall \u2014 but reaches 82% among women living alone without children, falls to 64% for those with a partner and no children, and drops to 49% for those with a partner and a child under six.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n