Early childhood development and decent jobs for women: Planting two trees from one seed?

Abstract This article examines the tension in the South African early childhood development policy space between expanding necessary social services to young children (and their caregivers) and increasing job opportunities for women, in the context of neoliberal economic policies aimed at decreasing public spending on social services. These tensions arise most sharply between developing a universal system for early learning provisioning – analogous to systems for basic education – and leading early learning expansion through small-scale private providers, hoping that markets will resolve challenges around sustainable employment opportunities and quality and access to early learning programmes. Our aim is to contribute to a broader discussion on the intersections between economics and human rights. We question the possibility for meaningfully realising the rights of young children in the context of economic policies that constrain the state and position a job as the only means through which to empower. We conclude that economic policies geared towards reducing the role of the state in delivering services while markets are handed responsibility to resolve access to fundamental rights will not deliver universal care and education to young children or decent work for women, at least not simultaneously.