Gender and the Care Economy: Bridging Economic and Social Gaps

Every day, women around the world collectively put in 16 billion hours of unpaid care work – cooking, cleaning, raising children, and looking after the elderly. This labour is the backbone of every economy on earth. Yet it appears in no GDP figure, earns no wage, and builds no pension. When we talk about the care economy, we are talking about this vast, mostly invisible system of work that keeps households, communities, and labour markets functioning – work that is overwhelmingly done by women. Understanding why this imbalance exists, what it costs women economically, and how policy can correct it is at the heart of the gender and development agenda today.

The gender imbalance in care work 🔗

The division of care work between women and men is not random. It is shaped by deeply embedded social norms that treat caregiving as a natural female responsibility rather than a shared human one. The data reflect this starkly. According to the ILO, women perform 76.2% of all unpaid care work globally, dedicating an average of 4 hours and 25 minutes per day to it, compared to just 1 hour and 23 minutes for men. This disparity holds even in high-income countries: in OECD nations, women still shoulder roughly two-thirds of unpaid care responsibilities.

The consequences for women’s participation in the formal economy are severe. ILO estimates from 2023 show that 708 million women worldwide are outside the labour force specifically because of unpaid care responsibilities, compared to just 40 million men who are excluded for the same reason. This is not a minor statistical footnote – it represents nearly three-quarters of all care-excluded working-age people being women.

Why women carry this burden 🔗

The roots of this imbalance are both cultural and structural. Gender norms across most societies associate women with caregiving from an early age, creating an expectation that domestic work is a female domain. Structurally, the gender wage gap reinforces these norms: because men typically earn more, couples often make a “rational” economic decision for the lower earner – usually the woman – to reduce paid work hours or exit employment to manage the household. Research reviewed by economists at the Free Policy Institute finds that this “pragmatic” economic argument alone cannot fully explain the persistence of the gap, since even when women work part-time, their unpaid care hours increase while men’s do not – a stark illustration of how deeply gender norms operate independently of economic logic.

The motherhood penalty is another structural driver. UN Women data show that in Europe, 60% of the gender pay gap is linked specifically to motherhood – not because women lose ambition, but because they reduce paid work hours or leave employment entirely when childcare is unaffordable and parental leave policies are inadequate. In the United Kingdom, one in three mothers with children under five has left paid work against her wishes due to caregiving responsibilities. And beyond the immediate career impact, every additional hour of unpaid care work reduces a woman’s chance of accessing higher education by 34%.

The invisibility problem in economic accounting 🔗

One of the most consequential aspects of this issue is how completely unpaid care work is absent from national economic statistics. If unpaid care work were assigned a monetary value, it would exceed 40% of GDP in some countries – surpassing entire sectors like manufacturing or transport. In the United States alone, a 2024 analysis found that unpaid care work – two-thirds of which is performed by women – is valued at more than $1 trillion annually. In Latin America, the figures are even more striking: unpaid care work represents approximately 21.4% of the region’s GDP on average, well above the OECD average of 15%. Because this work is invisible in official statistics, governments rarely budget for it, and the people doing it receive no social protection, no retirement savings, and no formal recognition for their contribution.

Economic consequences of the gendered care economy 🔗

The gendered distribution of care work does not just restrict women’s time – it fundamentally shapes their economic trajectories in ways that compound over a lifetime, feeding directly into what scholars have called the feminization of poverty.

The feminization of poverty: care work as a driver 🔗

The term “feminization of poverty” was coined by researcher Diana Pearce in the 1970s and gained global prominence at the Fourth United Nations Conference on Women in 1995. It describes the phenomenon where women and their dependents are disproportionately concentrated among the world’s poor. The link to care work is direct. When women spend their prime working years performing unpaid care, they accumulate fewer years of formal employment, fewer contributions to social security, smaller lifetime earnings, and diminished retirement savings. The result is that older women face significantly higher poverty rates than older men – a pattern sometimes described as the “graying” of the feminization of poverty.

The mechanism works across multiple pathways. Research shows that women are forced into occupational downgrading – taking jobs below their qualifications – to balance domestic responsibilities with paid work. Employers, in turn, statistically discriminate against women of childbearing age because they anticipate care absences, widening the pay gap and reinforcing the household dynamic that pushes women toward care work in the first place. It is a self-reinforcing cycle.

Time poverty and restricted opportunity 🔗

Time poverty is the care economy’s most direct impact on women’s lives. Globally, 45% of working-age women are excluded from the labour market because of unpaid care responsibilities, compared to just 5% of men. This limits not only income but also access to education, civic participation, rest, and leisure – the full range of activities that allow individuals to build capability and wellbeing over a lifetime.

The burden is heaviest for the most marginalized women. Women living in poverty, migrant women, women in informal employment, and women from minority groups shoulder the largest share of unpaid care work, while simultaneously having the fewest resources to pay for substitutes like childcare or elder care services. It is also worth noting that approximately 80% of paid domestic workers worldwide are women, meaning that when care work is paid, it remains feminized, low-waged, and precarious.

The broader economic cost of ignoring care 🔗

The economic argument for addressing the care deficit is not only about fairness – it is also about efficiency. Research shows that expanding access to childcare increases women’s labour force participation by roughly one percentage point initially, with the impact doubling over five years. Scaled up, this represents a significant productivity gain. UN Women estimates that investing in comprehensive care systems could create nearly 300 million jobs by 2035, generating economic growth that outpaces traditional sectors while producing fewer carbon emissions. In other words, the failure to invest in care is not a neutral policy choice – it is an active economic cost borne disproportionately by women.

The role of public policy in addressing gender disparities 🔗

Addressing the gendered structure of the care economy requires deliberate policy intervention across three interconnected fronts: recognizing care work in national statistics and law, reducing the burden on individual women by building public care infrastructure, and redistributing responsibilities more equitably across households, markets, and the state.

Recognizing unpaid work in policy frameworks 🔗

The first step is making unpaid care work visible. SDG Target 5.4 of the UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development explicitly calls on governments to recognize and value unpaid care work through social protection policies and shared responsibility frameworks. A growing number of countries have adopted national time-use surveys to measure how care work is distributed – a foundational step before any meaningful policy response is possible.

At the international level, a landmark step came in June 2024 when the ILO’s International Labour Conference adopted the first-ever global tripartite Resolution on Decent Work and the Care Economy – the first international agreement of its kind. The Resolution explicitly identifies the structural barriers unpaid care work creates for women in the labour force, and calls for investment in care policies, services, and social protection as shared responsibilities of states, employers, and communities.

Paid leave and social protection for caregivers 🔗

One of the most direct policy tools is the design of paid parental leave systems. Research consistently shows that gender-neutral or transferable leave tends to be used almost entirely by mothers, while leave specifically reserved for fathers produces measurable changes in care distribution. From 1995 to 2022, the share of countries providing paid paternity leave increased fourfold – from 13% to 56% of countries globally – reflecting a growing policy consensus. Yet the gap remains stark: only 6% of total paid leave available to families worldwide is reserved exclusively for fathers, leaving the structural imbalance largely intact.

Beyond leave, building social security protections for caregivers – such as pension credits for years spent in unpaid care – is essential to prevent the lifetime earnings gap from translating into old-age poverty. Some countries have begun experimenting with direct transfers and care credits within social insurance systems, though these remain limited in scope.

Affordable and accessible care services 🔗

Publicly subsidized childcare and elder care are equally critical. When quality care services are unaffordable, women are the default substitutes, regardless of their employment status or career ambitions. Governments that invest in universal or subsidized early childhood education and care reduce women’s time burden directly, while also creating formal employment in a care sector that itself needs better wages, working conditions, and professional recognition.

Case studies of gender-responsive policies 🔗

Several countries have moved beyond rhetoric to implement substantive policy changes that address the gendered structure of care. Their experiences reveal both what is possible and what remains difficult to change.

Sweden and Norway: the “daddy quota” model 🔗

The Nordic countries are the most cited examples of gender-responsive care policy. Sweden’s parental leave system offers parents a total of 480 days per child, with 90 days explicitly reserved for each parent on a non-transferable “use-it-or-lose-it” basis. Norway provides 16 weeks of non-transferable leave for each parent, with wage replacement rates between 80-100% for the initial portion – high enough to make the financial cost of fathers taking leave manageable.

The results of these “daddy quota” reforms have been significant. The 1993 Norwegian reform that added four weeks of paternal leave was associated with measurably reduced household conflicts over domestic work, and expanding paternal leave quotas from 4 to 10 weeks between 1996 and 2010 caused women to return to paid employment faster. In Sweden, the introduction of the reserved “daddy month” in 1995 marked the beginning of a sustained shift in paternal involvement in childcare, with evidence that when countries remove such quotas – as Denmark did – fathers’ leave-taking declines again, demonstrating that policy design, not cultural change alone, drives the redistribution of care. Sweden consistently scores highest among all high-income countries on gender equality in parental leave design.

Uruguay: the National Integrated Care System 🔗

Uruguay offers a compelling example from the Global South. Time-use surveys supported by UN Women and UNFPA, conducted in 2007 and 2013, revealed that women in Uruguay spent two-thirds of their week on unpaid work and only one-third on paid work – the reverse of men’s pattern. This data directly catalyzed policy action.

In 2015, the Uruguayan Parliament passed the Care Act (Law 19,353), establishing the Integrated National Care System (SNIC). Under this law, all children, persons with disabilities, and elderly persons gained a legal right to receive care services, with the state responsible for providing and guaranteeing the quality of those services. Care work was legally reconceptualized from a private family matter into a collective social and human rights issue. The system includes trained, formalized care workers – enabling women like Rossana Antúnez, a caregiver for a child with severe epilepsy, to move from informal to formal employment, with improved wages and legal protections. The ILO has cited Uruguay’s SNIC as a model for care policy globally, and the system has since influenced similar national care system discussions across Latin America.

Latin America’s broader care revolution 🔗

Uruguay is not alone. A total of 17 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean – including Colombia, Chile, Brazil, Mexico, and Panama – are now actively working to build national care systems, recognizing that unpaid care work accounts for between 18.8% and 26.8% of regional GDP. In Colombia, the National Care Policy approved in February 2025 formally acknowledges that unpaid care burdens fall disproportionately on women with young children and mandates a coordinated policy response. In Mexico and Peru, access to care is being enshrined as a legal human right. Panama’s national care law, passed in 2024, creates a framework to expand care infrastructure and professionalize care work – with more than 120 caregivers already trained through the country’s first diploma programme for elder care.

These regional developments reflect a growing consensus: that care work must be treated as public infrastructure, funded and organized by the state, rather than left as an invisible subsidy extracted from women’s time. The economic case is as compelling as the equity case – investing in care expands labour force participation, generates decent employment, and builds more resilient communities.

What it will take to close the gap 🔗

No single policy solves the gendered structure of the care economy. What the evidence points to is the need for a comprehensive, mutually reinforcing set of interventions. UN Women frames this as a “care revolution” built on recognizing care as skilled and essential work, reducing time-intensive burdens through better infrastructure, redistributing responsibility more fairly across genders and institutions, rewarding paid care workers with fair wages, representing caregivers in policymaking, and financing care systems through sustainable public investment.

What is clear from both research and the emerging policy record is that changing culture alone is insufficient – structural change in how states design leave systems, fund care services, and count care work in official statistics is essential. When Denmark abolished its daddy quota, fathers stopped taking leave. When Norway expanded it, women returned to work faster. Policy shapes behaviour, and behaviour gradually shapes norms. The care economy is not a women’s issue. It is a structural economic issue with a gender dimension that, unless addressed through deliberate policy, will continue to reproduce poverty, inequality, and wasted human potential – generation after generation.

What do you think? If unpaid care work were fully counted in national GDP figures, how do you think that would change the political priority governments assign to care policies? And should fathers’ parental leave quotas be made mandatory rather than optional – and what trade-offs might that involve for different types of families?

References

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