Women continue to bear a disproportionate burden of unpaid care and domestic work alongside their productive work and other responsibilities. This unequal load limits women’s opportunities to participate in paid work, education, public life, and decision-making, and undermines their ability to care for their own health and well-being. Unpaid tasks such as preparing meals, feeding and caring for children, the elderly, people with disabilities or illnesses, and maintaining the household are largely performed by girls and women and are key for food security and nutrition.  

Despite its essential role, unpaid care and domestic work remains invisible and undervalued in most economies. Women’s contributions to food systems, particularly those of Indigenous women using traditional knowledge for planting, tending, harvesting, fishing, and processing, often go unrecognized and uncompensated. In many rural and developing contexts, especially where climate change, biodiversity loss, and environmental degradation are intensifying, women and girls spend hours daily collecting water, firewood, and wild foods for household and agricultural use. When extreme weather events occur, women and girls take on additional work compared to men (FAO, 2024). This heavy workload reduces girls' time for school, limits women's capacity to engage in training, income-generating or leadership activities and restricts women’s mobility and migration to cope with climate disasters (FAO, 2024). 

Addressing the gendered distribution of unpaid care and domestic work is not only essential for achieving food security and nutrition but also for advancing gender equality and improving outcomes for future generations. 

Key figures 

• On average, women spend 4.2 hours a day on unpaid domestic and care work, while men spend 1.9 hours. 

• When both paid and unpaid work were considered, work burden was higher for women, 9.1 hours for women compared with 7.3 hours for men (FAO, 2023).