Unpaid care work prevents 708 million women from participating in the labour market

The International Labour Organization estimates that 748 million adults were outside the labor force because of care responsibilities in 2023. Of them, 708 million were women and about 40 million were men. This disparity unsettles explanations based on women’s lack of employment ambition. Many are not declining work in the abstract; without childcare, long-term support, transport, and secure flexibility, paid employment cannot be added to an already saturated day.

Care shapes the whole life course. Childbirth and parenting can produce an initial exit followed by slower wage growth, smaller pensions, and weakened professional networks. Later, aging parents or relatives needing support again make women the default caregivers. In poorer households, informal economies, and places with fewer public services, leaving the labor market is especially difficult to call a free choice. The data therefore connects household arrangements to income, security, and power across the wider economy.

Employment alone cannot be the solution. If new jobs remain low-paid, insecure, and incompatible with care time, women are simply pushed between two unsustainable forms of work. The ILO figures support public childcare and long-term care, paid family leave, reasonable hours, decent employment for care workers, and men’s equal use of leave. Progress should be measured not only by how many women enter markets, but by whether responsibility for sustaining life is being shared more fairly.