Striving for Affordable Child Care in Bangladesh

One silver lining of the COVID-19 pandemic, and its resulting child care crisis, is that an increasing number of countries have passed legislation supporting the child care sector. These include Vietnam, Peru, Argentina, and Bangladesh.

On today’s episode of the Hidden Economics of Remarkable Women, we will hear about Bangladesh’s efforts to increase access to child care, particularly for working parents. Bangladesh lawmakers passed the Daycare Center Act in 2021, and last year, they proposed implementation guidelines.

In the first part of the show, host Reena Ninan speaks with Marina Elefante, a lawyer with the World Bank’s Women Business and the Law Project. Ninan asks Elefante about the World Bank’s involvement with Bangladesh to increase child care there and what this law did to support daycares.

Then senior producer Laura Rosbrow-Telem profiles daycare managers in Dhaka, Bangladesh’s capital and largest city, to gauge their opinion of the law. Producer Alvah Amit Halder helped report and produce this segment from Dhaka, Bangladesh.

This week, we are also conducting a listener survey to better understand what you like about the podcast and what else you’d like to hear in future episodes. All participants in the survey who provide their email will be eligible to win a $25 Amazon gift card. To participate, follow this survey link. Thank you very much for your time and feedback.

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/heropodcast

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