Around the world, unpaid care work is carried out primarily by women. In many developing countries, and particularly in rural areas, the time and effort spent on unpaid care is restrictively high, with large costs on the education and employment prospects of women and girls. As both youth and rural employment become priority issues in sub-Saharan Africa, policies that reduce time spent on unpaid care will be crucial to enabling broader economic participation, especially for rural women.
Many types of ‘work’ are not recorded in traditional labor statistics. This includes ‘direct’ care work, like feeding a child or caring for sick family members, and ‘indirect’ care work, such as running errands, cooking, or cleaning. Unpaid care work (UCW)consists of direct and indirect care work carried out in households or in the community without remuneration. A large share of UCW takes place within households and is overwhelmingly taken on by women and girls.
In 2013, the International Labour Organization (ILO) adopted a resolution revising the definition of work, distinguishing paid (employment) and unpaid forms of work, and including unpaid care within the purview of work. This served two important purposes:
- making labor statistics more gender-balanced by including more of women’s work; and
- ensuring the consistent production of gender-disaggregated data on unpaid care work, with figures comparable across countries.
Measuring unpaid care and why it matters
The ILO estimates that every day 16.4 billion hours are spent on unpaid care work. That equates to about $11 trillion – or 9% of global GDP. Of that, 6.6% ($8 trillion) is carried out by women. In sub-Saharan Africa, 74% of this UCW is carried out by women – about three times more than men. Annually, that is the equivalent of 189 working days for women and 66 working days for men.
Research from Burkina Faso on gender-differentiated time use shows that unpaid work drives women’s ‘time poverty’—that is, the lack of time to pursue education, skills, or employment. This, in turn, impedes their skills development, autonomy, and overall well-being. It’s a similar situation across other sub-Saharan African countries, where limited access to infrastructure, patriarchal gender norms, and lower education are key drivers of women’s UCW-related time poverty.In contrast, higher levels of education are associated with greater female empowerment and improved access to the labor market.
The rural context also matters.In fact, the deficits in transport, energy, and ICT infrastructures that are common in rural areas increase the time and physical effort required for unpaid tasks, while marriage and childbearing further compound women’s unpaid workload.
Rural youth in West Africa
Recent work on rural youth employment in the West African Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU) shows the extent of young rural women’s time poverty. Spanning eight member states—Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Guinea-Bissau, Mali, Niger, Senegal, and Togo—survey data covering over 50,000 households allow us to observe time spent by individuals on certain unpaid tasks (see Figure 1 below).
Young rural women aged 15-34 in the WAEMU spend around 21.5 hours per week on unpaid care and related tasks—four times more than young men. Marriage or cohabitation does not substantially change the total time that young rural men spend on unpaid care activities. Instead, it mainly alters the composition of their tasks, with more time on errands/shopping and caring for children/adults and less on housework or fetching wood and water.
By contrast, women who are married or cohabitating with a partner spend almost double the amount of time on unpaid work (about 25 hours per week) than those who are unmarried (13.3 hours).For young rural women, marriage or cohabitation increases the total time spent on UCW and reshapes how that time is allocated across tasks, with particularly large jumps in housework and the care of children and other adults.
The cost of care
Care responsibilities often have high costs for women’s employment, keeping women out of employment entirely or restricting the work they can access outside the home. In 2023, an estimated 708 million women (ages 15+) globally were outside the labor force primarily due to unpaid care responsibilities, compared with 40 million men. Research by UN Women and the ILO also stresses that labor force participation drops significantly for women as they transition from single to coupled status and then to parenthood.
In sub-Saharan Africa, women’s labor force participation remains relatively high. However, for women in employment, income-generating activities need to be planned around unpaid care, hurting their productivity and affecting the quality of work they can access. In rural settings, time poverty is one of the main reasons for women’s lower agricultural productivity. Without any change in their care responsibilities, women are more susceptible to insecure forms of work and penalties on incomes and career advancement.
Recognizing, reducing, and redistributing care
Common policy responses to address women’s UCW-related time poverty include better childcare and eldercare provision, and reducing the time and drudgery of domestic work. In Senegal, for example, the UN Women’s 3R pilot program addresses rural women’s unpaid care needs through community creches; the provision of labor and time-saving infrastructure like millet mills, rice huskers, and improved stoves; and integrating unpaid care needs and solutions in the local development plans. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, community-based low-cost childcare centers in rural areas have had a high uptake, reducing women’s time spent on childcare, diversifying their economic activities and increasing incomes.
Policies that expand women’s access to off-farm rural employment opportunities can also help. For example, improved access to mobile and internet connectivity can help boost job opportunities for rural women. This has broader welfare effects for the household. In rural Malawi, for example, it is associated with improved household nutrition. In Senegal and Ghana, evidence suggests that maternal off-farm jobs lead to higher school enrolment, especially for girls and in poorer households.
Improving employment access needs to go hand in hand with investments in both infrastructure and public care services. In the absence of alternative options, increased employment opportunities risk simply increasing women’s total (paid plus unpaid) work and even increasing children’s—likely girls’—care responsibilities within the household.
Addressing the unpaid care workload of rural girls and women should be seen as an important component of rural development, youth employment, and gender equality policy agendas in sub-Saharan Africa. It will require policy action to reduce women’s time poverty and improve their access to employment opportunities through investments in infrastructure, care services, and social protection. To that end, policymakers should look to existing research and past programs to inform care strategies at the local, regional, and national levels.
