The Short Read
- Care work and the economy are closely linked because unpaid and paid care work keep households, workplaces and public systems running.
- UN Women says 45% of working-age women globally, or 708 million women, are outside the labour market because of unpaid care responsibilities, compared with 5% of men.
- Women and girls spend 2.5 times more hours on unpaid care work than men, and the burden rises further during conflict and climate-related crises.
- Investment in care services could create nearly 300 million decent jobs by 2035, according to UN Women.
- UN Women’s care agenda focuses on reducing and redistributing unpaid care, recognising care work, improving paid care jobs, and building care systems that support everyone.
Care work and economy: The connection hiding in plain sight
Every economy begins before the office opens.
Someone wakes a child; someone cooks; someone checks medicines; someone helps an ageing parent bathe. There is someone who washes uniforms, packs lunch, manages school messages, arranges a doctor’s visit, calms a fever, cleans the home and keeps the day from collapsing.
Much of that work is unpaid. Much of it is done by women.
That is why we should read care work and the economy together. People often treat care work as a private household responsibility, but its impact is public, economic and measurable. When care systems are weak, women reduce paid work, leave jobs, delay businesses, take lower-paid roles, or carry exhausting double shifts.
When care systems are strong, more women can work, children receive better support, older people live with dignity, care workers get decent jobs, and businesses gain a more stable workforce.
The care economy is one of the most transformative investments of our time because it creates decent jobs, drives economic prosperity, advances gender equality, protects human rights and strengthens resilience.
That is the central point: care is not a soft issue. It is infrastructure.
What is care work?
Care work includes the daily tasks that support people’s health, well-being, and development. It can be unpaid or paid.
Unpaid care work includes cooking, cleaning, collecting water or fuel, caring for children, supporting older people, assisting people with disabilities, and managing household needs. Paid care work includes nursing, childcare, eldercare, domestic work, social care, community health work, teaching assistance and other roles where one person’s work supports another person’s wellbeing.
UN Women’s care page puts it simply: care work keeps the world running. It supports families, communities and economies, but it remains undervalued and unequally shared.
That is why the care economy is bigger than childcare. It includes the unpaid care done at home, the paid care done in hospitals and homes, the policies that support care, the services that reduce care burdens, and the workers whose labour holds the system together.
Our recent story on Kerala nurses and Germany’s healthcare system showed this in human form. Nurses from Kerala did not simply migrate for jobs. Their skilled care labour became part of another country’s health infrastructure. That is care economy in action: women’s work crossing borders, supporting public systems and creating economic value.
Care work keeps the world running. Here’s why
Care work is the reason other work becomes possible.
- A parent can take a shift because someone is watching the child.
- A surgeon can operate because nurses monitor recovery.
- A factory worker can work because meals, laundry and eldercare are being managed somewhere.
- A student can learn because someone helped them get to school, eat, rest, and stay healthy.
Economies often count the wage paid to the worker who reaches the office. They rarely count the unpaid work that helped that worker get there. That is the blind spot.
ILO research has long shown that women perform more than three-quarters of unpaid care work globally. Its care work report says women perform 76.2% of total unpaid care work and spend 3.2 times as much time on unpaid care as men.
UN Women’s latest care economy factsheet brings the labour-market consequences into focus: 708 million working-age women are outside the labour market due to unpaid care responsibilities.
That number is not a lifestyle choice statistic. It is an economic warning.
When women are pushed out of paid work because care systems are absent, countries lose income, productivity, tax revenue, enterprise growth and leadership potential. Families lose financial resilience. Women lose earnings, savings, pensions and bargaining power.
The five reasons care is a transformative investment
UN Women’s new factsheet frames investment in the care economy around five broad gains. Together, they explain why care should sit inside economic policy, not only gender policy.
1. Care investment reduces women’s time poverty
Time poverty occurs when a woman has no real hours left.
She may be “available” on paper. In practice, her day is already full with unpaid care. That makes training, paid work, business travel, political participation, rest and health harder to access.
When governments invest in childcare, eldercare, disability support, water, energy, transport and public services, they reduce the unpaid workload carried by women and girls. This does not remove care from families. It gives families support.
It connects directly with our article on The Fatherhood Programme and caregiving norms. Redistribution also has to happen inside homes. Public systems can support care, but men’s participation in caregiving is central to making the change real.
2. Care systems strengthen women’s economic empowerment
A woman’s ability to earn is tied to the care available around her.
Affordable childcare can help a mother return to work after childbirth. Reliable eldercare can help mid-career women stay employed. Safe transportation can help care workers get to work. Paid leave can stop caregiving from becoming a career penalty. That is why care policy is also workforce policy.
In India and elsewhere, many women do not leave jobs because they lack ambition. They leave because the care arrangement breaks. Our earlier article on women leaving jobs after childbirth in India explored how childbirth and caregiving can push women out of the workforce when workplaces and families do not adjust.
Care investment changes that equation. It gives women more room to remain in paid work, restart careers, build enterprises and take leadership opportunities.
3. The care sector creates jobs
Care is labour-intensive. That is precisely why it can create employment.
Investment in care services could create nearly 300 million decent jobs by 2035. Estimates also suggest that doubling investment in education, health and social work could create 269 million new jobs by 2030.
These jobs can be transformative if they are decent jobs.
The word “decent” is important. Care workers are often underpaid, informal, migrant, overworked or poorly protected. Domestic workers, childcare workers, nurses, community health workers, and eldercare workers need fair wages, safe working conditions, training, rest, social protection, and recognition.
A care economy that creates jobs without protecting care workers will repeat old inequalities in a new sector. A strong care economy creates jobs with dignity.
4. Care investment supports children, older people and people with disabilities
Care systems are not built only for women who provide care. They are also built for people who receive care.
Children need safe early learning and nutrition. Older people need dignity and support. People with disabilities need accessible services and personal assistance. Families need systems that do not depend on one unpaid woman absorbing every gap. That is where care becomes a human-rights issue.
Strong care systems help people live with dignity across the life cycle. They also make economies more resilient because families are less likely to fall into crisis when one person becomes ill, old, disabled or dependent.
5. Care investment builds resilience in crises
Conflicts, pandemics, heatwaves, floods and displacement increase care needs. Schools close. Health services strain. Older people need more support. Children need supervision. Food, water and fuel take longer to access.
UN Women has warned that conflicts and climate-related disasters add further pressure to care systems, with women and girls absorbing much of the extra work. In crisis settings, women spend nearly four times more hours on unpaid care work than men.
It gives governments a clear lesson. Climate plans, disaster response, and social protection policies need built-in care planning. A flood response that ignores childcare, sanitation, menstrual health, disability care and elder support will leave women carrying the real emergency at home.
What UN Women is doing on care
UN Women’s care work is built around a simple shift: care should be recognised, reduced, redistributed, rewarded and represented.
That framework is often called the 5Rs of care.
- Recognise unpaid and paid care work as work that creates social and economic value.
- Reduce the unpaid workload through services, infrastructure and technology that save time.
- Redistribute care more fairly between women and men, households and the state, families and employers.
- Reward paid care workers with decent wages, protections and working conditions.
- Represent care workers and caregivers in policymaking, unions, planning and decision-making.
UN Women supports countries, advocates for policy change, produces data and guidance, and works with partners to build more gender-responsive care systems. Its care agenda includes childcare, long-term care, social protection, decent work for paid care workers, time-use data, public services and shared responsibility within households.
This approach helps move the conversation from “women should manage better” to “systems should be designed better”.
Why businesses should care about care
For businesses, care is not distant policy language. It affects hiring, retention, productivity and leadership.
A company may recruit women successfully and still lose them after marriage, childbirth, eldercare responsibilities or a family health crisis. Managers may call this “attrition”. For the employee, it may be the result of unsupported care.
Care-aware businesses can respond through:
- Childcare support or childcare partnerships
- Gender-neutral parental leave
- Return-to-work pathways
- Eldercare support
- Flexible scheduling with career protection
- Predictable shifts for frontline workers
- Safe transport where needed
- Manager training on caregiving realities
- Promotion systems that do not punish career breaks
- Benefits for domestic workers and outsourced care staff
The business case is strong. Care support helps retain trained workers, reduce avoidable exits, improve morale, expand women’s leadership pipelines and make workplaces more attractive to talent.
The stronger question for companies is no longer whether they can afford care policies. It is how much they lose when care remains invisible.
Why policymakers should treat care as infrastructure
Governments already invest in roads, energy, digital networks and industrial parks because these systems support economic activity. Care systems deserve the same seriousness.
A national or city-level care strategy can include:
- Affordable childcare centres
- Quality anganwadi and early childhood services
- Eldercare services
- Disability support services
- Paid parental leave
- Social protection for care workers
- Training and certification for care jobs
- Time-use surveys
- Safe public transport
- Water, sanitation, clean energy and housing close to work
- Tax and budget measures that support care provision
That is where care policy becomes economic planning. If a woman cannot work because there is no childcare, the labour market is not truly accessible. If an older person has no support, the burden moves to daughters and daughters-in-law. And if care workers are underpaid, the system survives by exploiting the very people it depends on.
Care investment helps economies use talent better.
What women can take from the care economy conversation
For women, this conversation can be deeply personal. Many women have been taught to call care “duty”, “love”, “adjustment” or “what women do”. Those words may carry emotional truth, but they can also hide labour.
Care takes time. It takes skill; it affects income; it shapes health; it changes career paths; And it influences whether women can study, work, migrate, lead or rest.
Women should not have to feel guilty for naming care as work. Naming it is the first step towards sharing it, valuing it and designing systems around it.
The care economy conversation gives women language to say:
- My time has value
- Caregiving affects my career
- Unpaid work should be shared
- Paid care work deserves dignity
- Public systems should support families
- Workplaces should understand care responsibilities
- Women’s economic empowerment cannot ignore care
That language can change households, workplaces and policy debates.
The Change in Content view
Care work is the quiet foundation of every economy. It raises future workers, supports current workers, protects older people, sustains households, and keeps public life functioning. Yet the people doing this work, mostly women, are still expected to carry it with little recognition and often without pay.
UN Women’s care economy push is important because it reframes care as an investment. That is where the future-of-work discussion needs to be more honest.
Women’s workforce participation cannot rise sustainably if care remains a private burden. Businesses cannot build inclusive leadership pipelines if mothers and caregivers keep falling out of them. And governments cannot talk about growth while ignoring the unpaid labour that makes growth possible.
Care work keeps the world running. The next step is to build economies that finally run with care workers, caregivers and care recipients in mind.
FAQs
Q: What is care work?
A: Care work includes paid and unpaid activities that support people’s wellbeing, such as childcare, eldercare, domestic work, nursing, support for people with disabilities, cooking, cleaning and household management.
Q: How are care work and the economy connected?
A: Care work allows people to work, study, recover, age and live with dignity. When care systems are weak, women’s paid work is restricted, and economies lose productivity, income and talent.
Q: Why does unpaid care affect women’s employment?
A: Women and girls do a much larger share of unpaid care work. UN Women says that 708 million working-age women globally are outside the labour market due to unpaid caregiving responsibilities.
Q: What is the care economy?
A: The care economy includes unpaid care in households, paid care jobs, care services, social protection, childcare, eldercare, domestic work, health support and policies that organise how care is provided and shared.
Q: Why is investing in care systems good for growth?
A: Care investment can create jobs, increase women’s labour-force participation, support families, improve child and elder wellbeing, and make economies more resilient. UN Women says investment in care could create nearly 300 million decent jobs by 2035.
Editorial Note and Sources
This Knowledge Hub article by Change in Content is based on UN Women’s June 2026 media factsheet on why the care economy is one of the most transformative investments of our time, and UN Women’s in-focus page on care work. It also uses ILO evidence on unpaid care work and care jobs to explain the wider economic context. The article is an editorial guide and analysis; it does not present independent survey findings.
Sources used
- UN Women media factsheet on the care economy
- UN Women in-focus page on care
- ILO report on care work and care jobs
- ILO estimates on unpaid care responsibilities and women’s labour-market exclusion.
