KARACHI: Despite the fact that women in South Asia perform most of the care work, which includes a wide range of activities carried out to support households and communities, such work remains largely unpaid, limiting women’s agency and their careers and pushing them into economic constraints.
This was highlighted by academics at a webinar titled “Unpaid Care Work Among Women in South Asia”. The event was organised by the Population Research Centre, Institute of Business Administration (IBA) on Thursday.
It brought together academics to highlight the scale, nature and policy implications of unpaid care work (UCW), which remains largely invisible despite sustaining households and economies.
The webinar was moderated by Dr Lalarukh Ejaz, assistant professor and director of the Centre for Entrepreneurial Development at IBA.
IBA webinar highlights impact of unwaged care responsibilities on South Asian women
Opening the discussion, Dr Ejaz explained that unpaid care work includes a wide range of activities carried out without pay to support households and communities. These include domestic chores such as cooking and cleaning, caregiving for children, the elderly and the sick, and voluntary services within communities.
Dr Saumya Tripathi, an assistant professor at Yeshiva University, said that unpaid care work is not limited to housewives, but also involves teenagers and young girls who contribute significantly to household management.
She explained that while unpaid care work underpins social and economic systems, it is often ignored in policymaking and excluded from economic indicators. Sharing findings of research, she showed that women shoulder the bulk of such work. Women from lower-income households tend to spend more hours on care responsibilities while rural women face heavier burdens compared to urban women.
Household composition also affects the distribution of care work. Married women with young children spend the most time on unpaid labour, whereas the presence of extended family members can help ease the burden. She added that community-based and volunteer care work, particularly in diaspora settings, is significant but frequently overlooked.
Highlighting policy gaps, Dr Tripathi said the absence of support systems such as childcare services, eldercare facilities and flexible work arrangements exacerbates inequalities. “Unpaid care work is critical for social and economic well-being, yet remains largely invisible and unsupported,” she said, calling for greater recognition and targeted policy interventions.
Dr Sameena Azhar, associate professor at Fordham University, focused on the Pakistani context, where she said entrenched gender norms assign women the primary responsibility for care work. Both working women and housewives, she said, are required to juggle multiple roles within the household.
During the Covid-19 pandemic, the burden intensified as school closures and remote learning increased childcare responsibilities, while routine domestic tasks also expanded. Women were expected to absorb all these additional duties, she added.
Citing recent estimates by the International Labour Organisation, Dr Azhar said around 117.4 million people in Pakistan are engaged in unpaid care and domestic work, of whom 66.7m are women. Approximately 60 per cent of women spend more than 15 hours per week on domestic tasks, compared to less than 7pc of men.
This leads to a “time and opportunity poverty” for women, creating barriers to advancing their careers, segregating them into lower-status roles, and sustaining a systemic gender pay gap, she said.
She also shared data on female labour force participation in the world, which showed that in South Asia, female labour force participation remains low, with Pakistan at 24pc, compared to higher rates in countries such as Sweden (80pc), Germany (76pc) and China (60pc). Afghanistan stood at the lowest with only 5.1pc of female labour force participation in South Asian countries.
The speakers stressed that recognising and redistributing unpaid care work is essential for achieving gender equality and improving economic outcomes, particularly in South Asia.
Published in Dawn, April 3rd, 2026