When the time comes for having children, too many women still face a difficult decision: career or family. Combining both priorities is challenging when childcare is unavailable, parental leave is limited and flexible work arrangements are rare. The result is that many women either end up with fewer children than they want, or are unable to fulfil their career potential.
Both outcomes have negative repercussions, not only for individual women who are left with fewer choices and opportunities, but also for society as a whole. When millions of women are in effect forced to give up their careers to take care of children and the household, their talents and other contributions remain untapped in the economy and public life. And when millions of women can’t have the number of children they want because that would in effect end their careers, the resulting low birth rates add further pressure on population numbers already in decline.
This is why UNFPA, with support from the Austrian Development Agency (ADA), is partnering with the private sector and governments to champion gender-responsive family policies in the Western Balkans and Moldova. Evidence shows that such policies – both at the national level and those implemented by the private sector – are powerful tools to shift discriminatory gender norms and redistribute unpaid care work so that both men and women can realize their career aspirations and their fertility intentions.
What does the Expanding Choices Program work on?
Working with the private sector to pilot and promote family-friendly workplaces, which can make significant improvements in gender equality, and benefits both companies and employees.
Supporting governments to strengthen and improve gender-responsive family policies promotes gender equality, more equal distribution of unpaid care work and boosts economic growth.
Addressing harmful gender stereotypes to expand choices for women and encourage men to take an active role in fatherhood and care responsibilities.
Building the evidence, knowledge and tools around this relatively new body of work to deliver evidence-based advocacy and create a tested and replicable model for gender-responsive family policies.
What are the programme benefits?
To companies:
Better reputation and competitiveness
Lower absenteeism, turnover, health-related and recruitment costs
Greater retention of female staff, especially working mothers returning to work after maternity leave
More inclusive and equal workforce
More innovative, productive and profitable companies
To governments:
Stronger demographic resilience
Supports the achievement of gender equality and women's empowerment
Increased uptake of national family-friendly policies and benefits
More dynamic labour market by removing barriers to women’s participation in the workforce
Increased economic growth
To societies:
More equally shared unpaid care work between men and women
Greater choices and capabilities for families to have the number of children they want
Positive and equal gender norms and roles are promoted
More equal, resilient and economically stable families
Better development outcomes for children, including health, education and well-being
When designing and implementing Family-Friendly Workplaces, it's important that companies consider different types of care that their employees might be providing at home to...
UNFPA, with support from the Austrian Development Cooperation (ADC), is organizing a webinar to showcase the experience of Sweden, Estonia and Slovenia in devising gender-...
Making the workplace more family-friendly brings benefits not only to mother and child, but to society and to your business too. Helping mothers return to work after maternity...
The Expanding Choices programme strives to develop and share knowledge, evidence and tools around family-friendly policies to support and further scale this work in the region. A number of assessments, case studies and reports have been undertaken and authored through this programme and can be found below.
A family-friendly workplace aims to support all employees to balance their work responsibilities with their care and family responsibilities, by creating a supportive work culture and environment and providing both practical and abstract support to employees to do so.
The Comparative Analysis “Gender-Responsive Family Policies: National Regulations in the Light of the New European Standards” is developed within the project “Expanding Choices: GenderResponsive Family Policies for the Private Sector in the Western Balkans and Moldova”, implemented by the UNFPA, in cooperation with the Austrian Development Agency (ADA), the operational unit of the Austrian Development Cooperation, i...
The Work-Life Balance Directive entered into force on 1 August 2019. Its adoption represented a move towards taking a broader approach to addressing women’s underrepresentation in the labour market. Key aspects of the Directive address paternity leave, parental leave, leave for caring purposes and flexible working arrangements for parents and carers, many of which are new concepts for Kosovo's legal framework. This...
fewer children than they want, or are unable to fulfil their career potential. 
