Sharing The Motherload: Engaging fathers and other key stakeholders to transform gender policy and foster care economies

In 2023, a group of mothers developed a powerful exhibition reflecting on their lived experiences of unpaid care work. We called it "The Motherload". Now it's been expanded to include fathers' voices with the aim to shift gender norms.

Using photographs and storytelling, mothers and fathers explore ways of working together to illuminate the struggles, strengths, and hopes that define daily care in the context of enduring gender and economic inequality, and colonial and apartheid legacies. The aim is to create caring economies that recognise and value mothers' unpaid care work by making it visible, reducing it, and distributing it more equitably. Their collective work offers critical insights to inform policy, infrastructure, and community practice.

  • Dates: 20 September –15 October 2025
  • Times: Monday – Sunday 09h30 – 15h30
  • Admission: Free
  • Venue: Iziko South African National Gallery Annexe. St John’s Road, Cape Town. View on Google Maps

The Iziko South African National Gallery Annexe is situated to the left of the National Gallery, on St Johns Road. It can also be accessed from the Company’s Garden.

This work was carried out with the aid of a grant from the International Development Research Centre, Ottawa, Canada and is funded by the Government of Canada. For more, see our partners and funders.