might expect, but by young males who had jobs. For example, a male youth from Madani who had a job said, “If my wife said that she can’t do the households, I’ll tell her that I am going to marry to bring another woman to help her. If she is impolite, I’ll send her to her family.”

## **Box 3. Additional illustrations of men’s roles and responsibilities related to household chores**

“My brother lives with us, he, his wife and his children, he doesn’t stay with his family the whole week, he only stays on Friday even though he doesn’t stand staying with his children. So, I don’t think there is a man could stay at home and share with us the house chores.” - Female youth, Khartoum, working outside the home “No, it depends on his mood, if he does the thing when he isn’t in the mood, so he ruins it, he said he is [tired] from the job and he said that he says that he is a man, he shouldn’t do anything.” - Woman, Khartoum, working outside the home “I will not help [her] because of the social vision for such thing is not good.” - Male youth, Madani, not working “I help her by going to my work, but I can’t help her at home.” - Male youth, Madani, working _Source_ : Qualitative work conducted for this report. See Annex 1 for methodology.

Given the strongly held beliefs and expectations among the greater share of Sudanese society with respect to women’s primary roles—if not sole role—as caregivers, it is not surprising that one of the factors motivating recently married women to drop out of the labor force is the burden of household chores. According to a woman from Madani who worked outside the home, “She has a lot of duties and responsibilities so she can’t make a balance between them, so she decides to leave her job for the sake of her home.” According to a female youth from Khartoum who worked outside the home, “Yes, the same example I know a girl dropped out her work because she got married and she couldn’t stand working and handling her house and her children needs.” The weight of the ‘double burden’ that Sudanese women who pursue income-generating opportunities face was raised by female youth and women in each of the FGDs (Khartoum, Madani, and Nyala), irrespective of whether or not they currently had a job.

# **_Childcare_**

It is not just household chores that impede women from working outside the home, but women’s responsibilities as the primary caregiver, combined with the lack of alternative childcare options, also pose an obstacle. Once a Sudanese woman is married, she is expected to start having children. Sudan’s fertility rate (births per woman) was estimated to be 4.4 in 2018 (World Bank 2020a), and large families are the norm, especially in the country’s rural areas. When employers across a range of industries were asked about their companies’ maternity leave policies and childcare facilities, most said they had one or the other if not both. For example, according to the director of a large agricultural business in Nyala, “Actually we do provide childcare related to the ministry and there is one hour for breastfeeding, so we give women all their rights.” Only one employer of a large company in Madani indirectly acknowledged that his business did not offer any childcare options. He said, “[T]he problem is the baby as she can’t work if she brought him with her, usually after marriage responsibilities increase especially if children are ill or at hospital, we can be tolerant for simple things but we won’t accept ten days’ vacation without excuse.” According to the focus group participants, childcare options are not readily available, which greatly limits women’s ability to work outside the home. Given the fact that most employers who were interviewed 49