UN Women’s continued support for care services
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Women who seek to realize their professional potential and access employment often face roadblocks due to the unequal distribution of unpaid care work. According to 2025 data from the National Statistics Office of Georgia (Geostat), 55.8 per cent of women are economically inactive, most often due to unpaid care responsibilities. The Time Use Survey conducted by UN Women and Geostat further shows that women spend five times more time on unpaid domestic work than men.
To address this challenge, and drawing on global best practices, UN Women supports the strengthening and expansion of care and support services. Since 2024, with its financial support, there have been licensed and certified training courses conducted for personal assistants of persons with disabilities and home-care specialists, which improves the participants’ employment prospects while equipping them with essential knowledge and skills. The courses are implemented in cooperation with the Ministry of Internally Displaced Persons from the Occupied Territories, Labour, Health and Social Affairs of Georgia.
By the end of 2025 and early 2026, a total of 128 care workers from 15 municipalities across Georgia had completed the training programmes. Among them, 70 were trained as personal assistants for persons with disabilities and 58 as home-care specialists. Participants acquired both theoretical and practical competencies necessary to improve the quality of care services for persons with disabilities and older adults. The training courses were conducted in the regions of Samtskhe-Javakheti, Samegrelo-Zemo Svaneti, and Racha-Lechkhumi and Kvemo Svaneti.
One of the participants was 52-year-old Maka Jokhadze, who lives in Ambrolauri Municipality in Georgia’s Racha region. By the time she found an announcement online about the UN Women trainings, she had already accumulated some practical experience: Her mother had been providing care for older persons for a long time, and Maka would often assist her. After learning about the new opportunity, she decided to take part in the personal assistant course for persons with disabilities.
“I learned a great deal—how to approach different individuals and how to handle them. I deepened my practical knowledge and discovered new things. The certificate was especially important for me. This document means a lot to me; it gives me more credibility and more confidence,” says Maka, who has secured employment after completing the training and is now a personal assistant to a wheelchair user.
UN Women continues its efforts to support the development of State-run care services in Georgia.
The training courses for personal assistants of persons with disabilities and home-care specialists are conducted under the UN Women project “Women’s Increased Leadership for Resilient and Peaceful Societies”, implemented with the generous financial support of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark.