By Deetya Gambhir
Women spend about 16 billion hours on unpaid care work every day across 64 countries—the same as 2 billion people working a full-time job at the minimum daily wage without pay.
Until the last century, women didn’t have the right to vote, the right to attend university, the right to own and manage property in their name—and everything else society has allowed others to do.
Whether it’s an ill-timed joke at the Golden Globes, the persistent wage gap, or the troubling headlines of violence, gender equality remains as elusive today as it was years ago.
As Jayati Ghosh, Professor of Economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, said, “Gender has been seen as a sort of separate silo, or even, dare I say, a ghetto, in economic studies. And so people tend to say, well, yes, we’ll look at all of these things, and then we will look at gender. Care is absolutely essential. Without care, there are not just unhappy or unhealthy societies, you have economies that are not resilient, that collapse.”
An ILO report found that women perform 76.2% (3 times more) of total unpaid work as compared to men.
The value of this unpaid care work is about 10% of the global GDP, or 11 trillion USD, while unpaid domestic work amounts to roughly 39%.
This care work, though arduous and thankless, is really what makes a society or an economy tick. In many ways it is the foundation on which other industries function. Unsurprisingly, it disproportionately penalises women— not being able to work full time with a decent wage, accumulate a pension, or receive the benefits that come from formal sector employment.
Ghosh adds, “Societies have historically handled this by creating a whole set of what is called the gender construction of society, whereby the responsibility of care is given to women and girls and women see this as their duty. So the work that is being done for free is sometimes not even recognized, and of course, it’s not valued. So the women who do this, don’t get equal bargaining power, within their households and in the broader society.”
These issues are not just hypothetical, but real threats to inclusive economic growth.
606 million employable women in Asia-Pacific, where women perform 80% of all unpaid care work, declared that unpaid care work for children, elders, and kin with disabilities is preventing them from joining the labour force, but only 41 million men listed the same reason. Mothers of children under 6 years suffer the highest economic penalty with an employment rate of 47.6%—the lowest amongst all groups.
The estimated value of unpaid care work in Switzerland is almost equivalent to that of the banking and insurance industry in the country. In Tanzania, that amount is equivalent to 63% of the country’s GDP.
Non market activities aren’t typically included while computing a country’s GDP, but 11 trillion dollars is an amount that exceeds the contribution made by many other sectors to the economy.
This could be a signal that the world’s income is underestimated at present, and this problem may persist even if it becomes a standard practice for countries to account for unpaid care work as the imputed value could very well be lower than the real one.
The omission of this work from GDP presents a skewed view of economic productivity; by failing to include unpaid care work, economic indicators overlook the contribution of this labour to overall economic well-being and stability.
Professor Ghosh also mentions, “In India, the share of women’s work participation was as low as 36% in the 1990s and it’s down to 18% —that’s what the latest data suggests. In an economy that was supposedly growing at 5-10% for two decades with rising labour productivity, there’s a massive decline in women’s workforce participation. If you take the larger definition of what the ILO now recognizes as work, including all of the care and extended care activities, then it’s not 18% of women who are working, it’s 86%.”
Feminist economists have been arguing what is called the five R’s for unpaid care.
First, to recognize this care work, acknowledge its existence. Second, once it has been recognized, to reduce it as much as possible, which can be easily done through public policy.
The third thing is to redistribute. This labor should be spread between all members of the household, private provision and the public sector. Fourth, reward the care workers whom you do pay and find ways to represent them as well. Often there are caretaking jobs for which women volunteers are called for, but they get paid almost a third of the minimum wage, as they aren’t workers per se, and yet have to do demanding things that are asked of them.
On the economic front, improvements are needed in global policies regarding child support and elderly care. Additionally, expanding paid jobs in care services and incorporating this work into global GDP and other economic measures, either directly or indirectly, is essential. There will always be times when people must take up domestic and care work, even if they’re not getting paid a dime for it.
All these numbers talk about women’s contribution alone; the real problem isn’t the existence of this work, it’s the burden on women to do most of it.
Approximately 60% of women don’t have the same economic rights as men—don’t take my word for it—the World Bank says so. In fact, women faced about 49% of total job losses by November 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Redistributing care is critical, and it would involve rethinking social relationships and tackling gender norms and stereotypes–a realm we’ve seen tremendous success and progress in.
As per Gender Gap Report 2024, it would take another 134 years to achieve gender parity.