This document addresses the first objective, setting out how the provision of care can be integrated conceptually within a market systems approach. It has been produced as the result of collaboration with market systems practitioners, gender experts and donors as part of a working group on the topic, and a peer learning session led by IDS and Oxfam at the 2015 SEEP conference. Follow-up field research on the use of market systems approaches to design interventions has taken place in Ethiopia, in collaboration with Oxfam-supported markets development programmes. This second phase has also engaged with other programmes and actors in Ethiopia working on market systems approaches and women’s economic empowerment, through a series of interviews and face-to-face meetings. The research will result in co-constructed knowledge on unpaid care work and its relation to market systems approaches and women’s economic empowerment, increased knowledge around the potential to design market systems interventions to address unpaid care work and in widening the community of practice through the engagement of gender and market systems professionals.