IT is a well-established ethical principle that the work someone does must be recognised and valued. The dignity of a person cannot be separated from the idea that they have the right to deploy their physical and mental faculties how they will, and that they have the right to the fruit of that effort. One of the reasons we find slavery abhorrent is that its institution violates these fundamental premises of what it is to be human. So how is it that for a huge segment of the population these ethical principles and standards can be set aside as a matter of routine without provoking concern let alone outrage? And how do we challenge and change this situation?

According to the government’s Labour Force Survey of 2024-25, there are 70 million people aged between 16 and 60 years in the workforce, and of these 13m are classified as “contributing family workers”. They are people who are eng­a­ged in the production of goods and services for the market, or to produce goods for household con­­sumption, but are not individually compensa­ted by pay or profit. Of these 13m, 8m are women.

But this number underestimates women’s productive work because it is based on responses to the question at the household level about whether an individual works. Communities, families and even women themselves do not recognise that they work, even while they know that they perform essential productive activities. When the same national survey asks if each listed individual in the household takes part in named productive activities — for example, those related to crops, livestock and collecting firewood — the number shoots up. It turns out then that 24m additional people identify as workers, 20m of them women. So 28m women aged between 16 and 60 work in the productive economy without pay or profit!

Not valuing women’s productive and care work just because it is done by women is grossly unjust.

This is not all, of course. Economic policy and measurement have historically privileged ‘productive’ activities — that is, activities related to the production of goods and services. But ‘social reproduction’ or activities that contribute to the physical and social survival of families and the community form the very base of productive sectors. Much of what goes into ‘social reproduction’ — such as raising children, looking after the elderly and the infirm, and supporting neighbours and communities — is unpaid care work done by women. According to the Labour Force Survey, almost 51m women aged between 16 and 60 years perform unpaid care work such as looking after children and the elderly, and cooking and cleaning, etc. Women spend an average of 16.1 hours per week on care work, compared to men who spend 2.6 hours on these tasks.

Care work remains even less visible than the underpaid and mostly unpaid work that women do in agriculture, livestock and so many other informal sectors. All of these diverse activities share two common features. One, they are essential for the sustenance of families, communities and the national economy and yet are mostly uncompensated. Two, they are carried out within the context of the household — and it is simply presumed rather than investigated that the fruits of women’s physical, mental and emotional labour are received by them.

Globally, there is growing recognition that unpaid productive work as well as care work performed largely by women should be acknowledged and accounted for. The International Labour Organisation’s definition of ‘work’ now includes employment for pay or profit but also the production of goods for the household’s own consumption without pay or profit. UN Sustainable Development Goal 5.4 calls on states to “[r]ecognise and value unpaid care and domestic work through the provision of public services, infrastructure and social protection policies and the promotion of shared responsibility within the household and the family as nationally appropriate”.

Pakistan’s legal framework too has begun to recognise women’s unpaid productive and care work. The 2019 Sindh Women Agricultural Workers Act defines “woman agricultural worker” to cover any female person who “individually or jointly with any other person, paid or unpaid … engages in agriculture directly or through the supervision of others…”.

In a recent judgement, the Islamabad High Court recognised that married women contribute to the maintenance of a marital home and the welfare of the family through “domestic labour, childcare and household management”. The court acknowledged that such labour is not financially compensated and declared that all assets acquired during marriage should be distributed equitably between spouses to account for the unpaid contributions made by women.

Not valuing women’s productive and care work just because it is done by women to whom society has traditionally assigned the role of caregiver is grossly unjust. And it becomes increasingly difficult to justify in an economy that is otherwise marching headlong into market-based relations where the worth of everything is measured in money terms. There are other consequences too. Studies have shown that women’s intensive work in agriculture to support their family incomes often comes at a cost to their health and the health of their children.

What is the way forward? The women’s rights group Aurat March is arguing ahead of their planned march on May 10 that it is the responsibility of the state, through social protection systems, to lead the way in valuing women’s productive and care work by providing a basic income guarantee to all women. If this idea seems radical, it is only because we are conditioned to overlook and devalue the kind of work done primarily by women. A basic income guarantee for women simply follows from the ethical principle that the labour of all people must be valued, including that of 60m or so of our fellow citizens who happen to be women.

Haris Gazdar is senior researcher at the Collective for Social Science Research.

Sara Malkaniis a lawyer and the author of Progressive Laws In Patriarchal Societies.

Published in Dawn, May 9th, 2026