Women around the world spend more time than men doing unpaid care and domestic work:
taking care of children, elders, and the ill. In the United States, women spend 37 percent
more time on unpaid care than men. This unequal distribution of unpaid work—work that is
essential to families and society—limits women’s career choices, income, and personal
development. It also affects their overall health and well-being.

This unpaid work is real and contributes value to the economy and society, but it is not
recognized by official statistics. Too often we attribute the inequality in care work to social
conventions while ignoring the way public policies and economic choices reinforce this
inequality or cause women to shoulder a disproportionate burden of care work without any
compensation. Care work provides a huge subsidy to an economy that systematically
undervalues women’s work, paying women less for the same job and pushing them into jobs
that pay less. A conservative estimate of the value of women and girls’ unpaid work in the
United States is $1.48 trillion annually—more than twice the US defense budget or about
double the combined annual revenue of America’s top five technology companies. While
women contribute unpaid time and work, the economy grows billionaires at a rate never
seen before. It’s no coincidence that 9 out of 10 billionaires are men.

In the United States, women spend an extra 2.1 hours per day more than men doing unpaid
care work. That is the equivalent of more than 95 extra eight-hour workdays per year for
zero pay. Current policies and social conventions hinder women and families from choosing
a better balance of paid and unpaid work. The economy creates obstacles that push women
into lower-paid jobs and often out of the paid workforce completely.