A comparative study on legal frameworks of work and family reconciliation in Mozambique and Tanzania

ABSTRACT

This paper analyses legal frameworks designed to reconcile work and family responsibilities in Mozambique and Tanzania from the perspective of ILO standards. Three labour laws are explored, the Mozambique Family Law 2004, the Mozambique Labour Law 2007, and the Tanzania Employment and Labour Relations Act 2004. ILO standards have encouraged both countries to become better equipped for working families to reconcile their work and family responsibilities. Their legal frameworks, however, remain below ILO standards, especially in parental leave and childcare services. The paper finds the root cause of such low compliance from a number of historical junctures, including a historical hangover from colonial regimes, social development policies and structural adjustment policies. The paper suggests a stronger commitment by the Mozambique and Tanzania governments’ and active involvement of civil societies to reshape the patriarchal political economy and promote gender equality in both public and private spheres.

KEYWORDS:

• Work and family reconciliation
• Mozambique
• Tanzania
• International Labour Organisation standards

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Ladigracia Epafrasi Lyakurwa is a Ph.D. graduate from the Department of Public Administration, Yonsei University, South Korea. She participated in the Brain Korea research project on International Development, and Social Economy. Her research specialises on gender relations and women social security pluralism in Africa. She can be reached at [email protected].

Miyang Jun, Ph.D., is a research fellow at the Seoul Foundation of Women and Family. She has research interests in family policy, social security, and qualitative research methods. Her recent publication includes ‘Doing the right thing? UK lone mothers on benefits and their sense of entitlement to leisure’ in Critical Social Policy (2019) and ‘The role of social capital in shaping policy non-comliance for Chhaupadi practice in Nepal’ in Asian Women (2018). She can be reached at [email protected].

Moo Kwon Chung is a professor of the Department of Global Public Administration and the director of Institute for Poverty Alleviation and International Development at Yonsei University, Wonju, South Korea. His areas of expertise are social policy, comparative political economy, development studies, and public administration. His researches have been published in various journals and book chapters. In the area of development studies, he contributed a chapter of ‘Development of Transformative Social Policy in South Korea: Lessons from the Korean Experience’ in Learning from the South Korean Developmental Success: Effective Developmental Cooperation and Synergistic Institutions and Policies, Palgrave (2014). Coauthored with Firehiwon G. Araya, ‘Promoting gender equalities from a capability perspective in the context of development countries’, in International Review of Public Administration (2015), and so on. He can be contacted at [email protected].

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea Grant funded by the Korean Government [grant number NRF-2016S1A5B8925203].