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.

The headline number needs its denominator. Across the 1.6 billion women and 800 million men outside the global labor force, 45 percent of women cited care, compared with 5 percent of men. Among women aged 25–54, the figure rose to two-thirds, or 379 million. The share also varied sharply by region: 63 percent in Northern Africa, 59 percent in the Arab States, 52 percent in Asia and the Pacific, and 19 percent in Northern America. These are proportions among people already outside the labor force, not the share of every woman in each region. They resist a universal “choice” story and point instead to unequal services, infrastructure, education and job access.

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 by entry, retention and advancement—and by whether responsibility for sustaining life is being shared more fairly. The estimates draw on 125 countries; ILO cautions that its 2023 figures are not directly comparable with its 2018 estimates because the methodology changed. The ILO statistical brief provides the definitions and regional breakdowns.